


Kings of the Night

by dualityforce



Category: SPN, Supernatural
Genre: AU, M/M, creature!boys, dark!boys, werewolf!Dean, werewolf!Sam, werewolf!john
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-03
Updated: 2013-11-03
Packaged: 2017-12-31 09:04:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 8
Words: 23,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1029836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dualityforce/pseuds/dualityforce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nine years ago, Mary Winchester was killed by a demon with yellow eyes, leaving her mate and two young sons angry and desperate for revenge. Now, the demon will learn that the only thing worse than a pissed off hunter is a pissed off werewolf... or three.</p><p>Warnings: werewolves, somewhat skewed morality, brotherly incest, blood and guts and violence, and a family that is completely and utterly wrapped up in themselves. Also, a timeline that assumes Mary was killed when Sam was eight years old rather than six months.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

 

 

**prologue**

  
“You’re an asshole.” Sam growled, shoving at his brother’s shoulder ineffectually. Dean grinned down at him, teeth glinting menacingly in the moonlight, and Sam scowled as he bucked his hips and tried to wriggle free. The hands around his wrists tightened in response, Dean gently slamming them into the ground as a warning not to try and fight. “A really big asshole.”  
  
Across the clearing, John Winchester sighed in exasperation. “Dean, let your brother go. We both know that if he really wanted to get out, there’d be no way you could hold him down… the kid’s a quick little shit when he wants to be.”  
  
Dean turned his head to say something, and Sam grinned to himself as he used the opportunity to his own advantage – twisting his hips and expertly twisting his body to slide out of the small space underneath Dean’s arm. He was on his feet and swiftly crossing the distance between himself and his father before Dean even had the time to fully process what was happening.  
  
“Told you.” John said with a shrug of his shoulders, grinning a little as Sam tucked himself close to his side, slinging an arm over his youngest son’s shoulders. “You really think that after seventeen years of the kid worming his way free, you’d have learnt your lesson.”  
  
Dean shrugged his shoulders, heaving his way to his feet in a fluid moment and collecting his leather jacket from where he’d tossed it aside when the two of them had started scrapping.  
  
“Never hurts to try,” He grinned, draping his jacket over a branch, alongside the two already hanging there. “You two ready? Or are we just gonna stand around talking all day?”  
  
John grinned wider, punching him solidly on the shoulder, before stepping aside, peeling his t-shirt off and tossing it on the floor, jeans and boxers following close behind. Sam was next, taking his sweet time in the same way he always did, and it wasn’t until the last of the youngest Winchester’s clothes hit the floor that Dean realized the he was the only one still dressed.  
  
Scowling, he tossed them aside carelessly, feeling the slight tingle in the base of his spine even as he kicked off his jeans and shifted to his hands and knees. He caught a brief glimpse of tawny fur and hazel eyes before the change swept over him, as seamless as always. There was a brief moment of white hot agony, all of his bones breaking and shifting, and then the pain eased and he eased himself into a stretch.  
  
A feeling of contentment settled in the pit of his stomach as he felt the familiar power in his muscles, pressed his claws into the ground and finally rose back to his feet with the closest thing his canine face could manage to a grin. Across the clearing, his father was just standing from his own stretch, and Dean turned his head to look for Sam just in time to feel the younger canine’s body barrel into his own.   
  
He twisted his body, snapping at the air his brother had occupied only seconds before, but their father hadn’t been lying when he said that the kid was fast. He was already at the tree line, bushy tail wagging lightly behind him like a house pet, outlined so perfectly by the moon that he looked almost like a painting. Where Dean and John were wide-set and muscular, Sam was slim and lithe, his head the perfect height tuck comfortably underneath Dean’s neck. He was built to attack rather than to defend, fast on his feet and with a mind just as sharp as his teeth.  
  
Letting out a small snarl, Dean launched himself after the smaller wolf. As he always did, Sam waited until he was almost close enough to tackle him to the floor, and then he took off into the night, paws moving so lightly over the ground that they were almost silent. Behind him, Dean could hear the sound of their father closing in.  
  
The chase was on.


	2. Part One

 

 

Bobby Singer had spent ten years of his hunting career chasing demons and monsters across America. All he had to his name was a duffel bag, a rusty Ford pick-up and a Rottweiler curled up in the cab. He'd spent a lot of those years with Rufus, had buddied up with a few other hunters along the way, and by the time that he'd first lain eyes on Singer Salvage he was world-weary and dog tired. 

He'd declared that he was getting out of the life whilst the going was still good, and Rufus had laughed in his face. Less than two years later, and the two phone lines in his kitchen had grown to twelve, to fifteen, and the name Bobby Singer was being tossed around the hunting community with the same casual regard as had previously been reserved for Harvelle's Roadhouse alone. 

For all of his grumbling and grouching - and there was plenty of that, that was for goddamned sure - Bobby couldn't really complain. From the moment that he'd realized that his Karen was gone forever, there'd been a small part of him that had known that he'd never be able to leave the life completely. Hunting was an addiction in the same way that drinking and gambling were, only twice as lethal.

He settled into his new role as the go-to man for information happily enough, and for the following five years, his life never strayed from that familiar monotony. 

Until, that was, he first caught wind of the Winchesters.

**

  
The first rumors drifted to him slowly. The occasional hunter off-handedly mentioning that a hunt they were looking into had already been solved; a few reports of a couple of new hunters on the scene. At first, Bobby dismissed them.

Hunting was a rough gig, and it had a hell of a turn around. There was always normal people who had lost family members or loved ones stumbling across their world, and many of them found a new purpose in the hunt for vengeance. Many of them sought revenge in the solid weight of a shotgun, and the unfamiliar curl of a Latin exorcism on their tongues. Some of them made it – gradually learnt the skills they needed to survive, took their time and played it safe. Others didn’t. 

It was a month later that he got the name Winchester, from a hunter called Davidson who’d come away from his most recent hunt with a few new scars and fear in his eyes when he regaled Bobby with the news that he hadn’t been the only hunter tracking the wendigo through the Minnesotan mountains that week. 

“Three of them,” He swore, face strangely solemn. Last time Bobby had seen him, the guy had been full of energy, barely able to sit still. Somehow, the hunter didn’t think that it was his friend’s concussion or broken arm that seemed to have altered his mood. “Scary sons of bitches. I tell you, if I never have to see them again? I’ll die happy.”

**

The salvage yard was quiet and calm, birds flitting above overhead and Rumsfeld curled up sleeping in his kennel. Bobby was washing dishes, back door propped open in an effort to drag in some cooler air; it was the dog days of summer now, and the oppressive heat made the air feel thick and heavy on his tongue. 

“Can’t wait for the goddamn winter,” The hunter muttered to himself, dumping the last of the week’s dishes on the draining board, scowling when he had to shuffle a few mugs around to make everything fit. If his Karen could see him now, he knew that she’d be far less than impressed – she’d always instead that dishes had to be washed every night, regardless of how many there was. 

He glanced up out of instinct, eyes surveying the yard before dropping to Rumsfeld’s dog house, frowning when he found it empty. The dog had proven himself to be a fairly fantastic guard dog, especially given his age, and it wasn’t often that he gave into the urge to wander off. But that wasn’t to say that it didn’t happen – the long chain attached to the wooden kennel’s frame was there for a reason, even if Bobby had foolishly forgotten to attach it that morning.

Scowling to himself, he tersely dried his hands on his pants, raising his fingers to his lips and letting out a shriek whistle as he stepped out of the house and onto the porch. He froze.

The dusty lot was no longer deserted. Now, two teenagers leant up against the porch railing and a third – older – man stood at the bottom of the porch steps, arms crossed over his chest. The new angle gave him the perfect view of Rumsfeld, perhaps the most reliable guard dog he’d ever had, cowering in the back corner of his kennel and Bobby shivered at the realization that there was something seriously amiss.

“Can I help you?” He demanded, leaning against the doorframe in a move that he hoped looked casual. Just to the left of him, now within an arm’s reach, his shotgun rested against the wall. 

“I sure hope so.” The eldest man drawled. He smiled, and Bobby wondered if it was supposed to look friendly – the glint in his eyes made it seem threatening, and the hunter’s hand reached for the shotgun without thought. “The name’s John Winchester. These are my boys: Sam and Dean.”

He inclined his head towards the teenagers, and Bobby turned his head a little to get a better look at the two of them. Both of them were handsome, defined cheekbones and strong jaws, and both of them looked just as ease as their father. The blonde one, perhaps a little older than Bobby’s initial estimation of a teenager, had the same muscled physique as his father; his brother was slight and willowy, all long bones and lean muscles, a mop of dark hair curling around his ears.

Both of them were grinning in a way that was making Bobby more than a little uncomfortable.

“I’ve heard of you,” He shrugged, reaching a hand up to adjust his cap, trying to wipe the sweat from his brow without them noticing. He wasn’t sure he was entirely successful, judging by the way that the youngest boy’s grin seemed to sharpen in amusement. “But that still doesn’t explain why the hell you suddenly decided to show up on my property unannounced. By law, I could shoot the three of you where you stand.”

John didn’t seemed perturbed, just shrugged his shoulders in a fluid movement that just screamed predator. “Rumor has it that you’re the go-to guy for information. We’re hunting a demon, yellow eyed sucker, and we seem to have hit a road block.”

“Ever heard of a phone?” Bobby snarked.

John just shrugged again. “I like to have a name to match to a face, what can I say. Now, you gonna help us or not?”

Bobby raised an eyebrow at the man’s sheer audacity and refusal to be cowed. He had half a mind to turn them away, but his curiosity had well and truly been piqued, and he sighed instead.

“No weapons in the house.” He relented, kicking the large metal bucket that stood just outside of the door, before he retreated a few steps inside. John’s eyes trailed slowly and deliberately down to the shotgun in the hunter’s hand, and when he grinned again, he seemed genuinely amused. 

His feet didn’t make a sound as he made his way up the steps and across the porch, and Bobby refused to show his surprise – there was a reason that he’d never got them seen to. There was a certain security to knowing that the creaking of the wood would alert him to anyone headed towards the door, but John avoided the rotten parts as if he’d lived there for years.

He didn’t hesitate in pulling his handgun from the back of his pants, dropping it into the bucket. Bobby expected another gun, perhaps a knife or two to sit alongside it, but John dropped in one solitary switchblade before he stepped aside. The older boy, Dean, added another gun and Sam tossed in two knives, and Bobby raised an eyebrow when they followed their father inside.

“That’s it?”

John tilted his head, something almost menacing in his eyes. “Do I look like a man who needs a weapon to feel safe, Singer?”

He certainly didn’t, so Bobby let it slide, grumbling under his breath as he led them through the house and towards the study.

“Tell me more about this demon.” He instructed them, nodding to the mismatched chairs dotted around the room as he sunk into his own. Sam and Dean both moved towards the window seat without so much as a spare glance, sinking down in an eerily synchronized manner, and John chose the cushy armchair on the other side of the desk. 

“Started a fire in a nursery that killed the mother, though the child escaped unharmed.” John reeled off easily, kicking back in the seat. “In the week before, there was unexplained electrical storms, crop failures… Lots of pretty biblical shit.”

Bobby nodded thoughtfully. “Sounds like an upper-level guy, someone a little more powerful than your standard black-eyed baddie of the week. You say he had yellow eyes? Good, that narrows it down a little.”

He hummed thoughtfully, spinning in his seat to rifle through the bookcase behind him. A long moment of searching produced a thick, leather-bound book with no writing on the cover; it had been a gift from Pastor Jim years ago, something he’d collected from another man of the cloth during a year of travelling. 

It had taken Bobby a while to translate it, but it had proven itself more than useful – it seemed, once he was finally able to make sense of it – that it was some kind of demonic index. It held the names of not just demons themselves, but also their masters and creators, and a list of tools developed by hunters over the years, with the specific purpose of killing them.

The last entry had been filled in by none other than Samuel Colt himself, containing only a large, two-page wide drawing of his fabled gun like no other, signed at the bottom with a small squiggle.

“This’ll help,” He nodded, dropping the thick book down onto the desk with a loud thud. Dust flew up, thickening the air, and Bobby fought back the urge to sneeze as he curtly wiped down the cover with the back of his sleeve. “Never come across a demon that wasn’t listed in these pages somewhere. But it’s gonna take a while.”

He didn’t miss the look that John’s sons shared, exasperated and restless, hands and feet tapping in a staggered rhythm. They reminded Bobby of the caged wild cats in a zoo – pacing backwards and forwards, never sitting still for more than a few moments. He hadn’t liked it then, with a foot of glass between him and those animals, and he liked it even less in the confines of his study. 

John simply shrugged, shifting his weight to find a slightly comfier position in his seat.

“We’ve got time.”

Bobby rolled his eyes, longing for the bottle of whisky he kept stashed in his desk but unwilling to share it. “We’re not talking a couple of hours here, Winchester. I’m talking days, weeks… maybe even months.”

John didn’t seem too put out by the news, snagging a manilla folder off the top of a high stack of papers with little care for Bobby’s privacy. He resisted the urge to snatch it back like a toddler, and instead raised an eyebrow at the action, watching silently as John studied the folder intently, flicked it open after a long moment. 

The words  _INCUBUS – ST LOUIS_  were hurriedly scrawled across the top in Bobby’s hurried scrawl, and he knew that inside were the detailed case notes that Caleb had sent over the night before. He’d meant to pass them on to Joshua, knew that the hunter was just finished up a job in Nashville and had figured that he could swing by on the way back to his brother’s house.

It looked like he wouldn’t have to bother.

“Boys,” John said gruffly, rising to his feet in a smooth movement, keeping the folder in his hand even as he moved towards the door. “Looks like we’ve got ourselves a way to pass our time while we wait. We’ll phone when we’re done, Singer. Check in on you.”  
Bobby didn’t doubt it in the slightest.

He didn’t get up and see them to the door, just listened as the front door swung shut and the boys laughed in the yard; the place fell silent again, and Bobby reached for the bottle of Jack with a shaking hand.

**

Sam’s fingers tapped restlessly against the diner table, an inconsistent rhythm that came from various Metallica songs strung together without thought; under the table, his knee bounced beneath the warm weight of his brother’s proprietary hand.

John rolled his eyes, taking in the way that his youngest son’s eyes were focused firmly on the diner’s window, temple resting against the back of the vinyl booth and face tipped so far forwards that his face was almost touching the glass. Out of all of them, he’d always been the most restless, bursting with so much energy that John had long-since abandoned his attempts to get the teenager to sit still.

He was still seventeen, young and reckless and John knew that his wolf was never too far from the surface. His eldest son was the one with the easy grin and the infallible charm, the one that screamed trouble in the easy sprawl of his limbs, but Sam was the one to watch. 

“Hello, there,” A perky, female voice announced from next to John’s shoulder. She was young, nervous in their presence, and her voice trembled in a way that made John grin to himself. “What can I get you?”

Sam turned from the window, shook his head in fond amusement when Dean eyed her up and down without any care for subtlety.

“Three burgers,” He drawled, green eyes dancing with mischief and something a little darker. “Bloody as you can get ‘em, sweetheart.”

Sam snickered, shifting his weight to rest against his brother’s side, leant his head in to nuzzle against the older man’s neck even as Dean shifted his arm to accommodate him there. The waitress faltered, pen halting mid-stroke, watched with an open mouth as Sam nipped at the soft skin there. A hot blush made its way across her cheeks, and John watched in amusement as the pen threatened to spill from her fingers.

“Sam,” He warned after a few moments, nudging the younger werewolf’s foot with his own. “Cut it out before this young girl passes out on us.”

The seventeen-year-old pulled back casually, staying tucked into his brother’s side even as he slouched a little lower, reached a hand out to spin the salt shaker with nimble fingers. The waitress, whose nametag read Lucy, seemed frozen for a few moments before she managed to collect herself for long enough to scurry into the depths of the kitchen.

John couldn’t help the chuckle that broke free.

“Little tease,” Dean grinned, but his arm pulled Sam in closer and he turned his head to nuzzle against Sam’s hair. “Getting her all riled up like that. Bet she’ll be too embarrassed to come back out now, sends someone else instead.”

Sam grinned, looking more proud than he had a right to be. He tipped the salt shaker onto its side, nudging the small object until it began to roll on the edge in a wide circle. Dean’s hands twitched in temptation, obviously more than a little drawn to the idea of reaching over and knocking it off balance, but a sharp glare from Sam had him leaving them where they were.

“So,” The youngest Winchester started casually, eyes still trained resolutely on the spinning salt shaker. “We’re after an incubus?”

John shrugged, winking at Dean as he reached over and knocked the shaker off balance, sending it careening onto the tabletop with a sharp clang. Salt spilled across the surface, and a few people stationed in nearby booths glared over at them. “That’s what the research would suggest. Seems to be attacking men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, which is slightly atypical but not unheard of. So far it’s killed twelve and left four in the hospital.”

A waitress interrupted them, setting down three baskets of burgers and fries on the table, before scurrying away just as quickly as she’d come. John wondered, absently, if Lucy had warned her about sticking around for too long – regaled her with the knowledge of his sons’ somewhat exhibitionist ways. 

“So he hasn’t skipped town?” Dean inquired, shoving a few fries in his mouth even as he spoke. “Kind of unusual for him to stick around for so long, isn’t it?”

John shrugged again. “Some incubi prefer to have one haunting ground. Whilst most of them skip around, there’s been stories of some staying in one place for as long as ten years. It makes it easy to scope out local haunting grounds – where they’re most likely to get lucky, or where people are least likely to notice them. Maybe he just got a little bit too cocky.”

Sam grinned. “So we’re setting a trap for him? Dean and I go in ‘undercover’ and see if we can lure him off to his death? Sounds fun to me. I bet I can pull him first.”

“There’s a slight glitch to that plan,” Dean frowned. “We’re werewolves. He’ll clock us as soon as we’re through the door.”

John tilted his head, pausing to take a bite out of his burger. The flavors hit his tongue pleasantly; clearly, Lucy had been listening when they said that they liked their burgers bloody. Whilst it had nothing on the taste of a raw catch, a fallen deer or even a rabbit, it was the best burger John had eaten in a long time. 

“Not necessarily. Incubi can recognize their own kind, but apart from the whole ‘feeding off sexual energies’ thing, they’re otherwise pretty human.” He pointed out. “It’s not like he’ll be able to smell us or anything. A trap could work… and even if it doesn’t, we’ll be able to keep an eye on him from the inside, at least.”

Dean nodded slowly. “Okay, yeah. Trap it is.”


	3. Part Two

The bar was loud and smoke-filled, Zeppelin playing from the speakers and the occasional smack of pool balls bouncing off one another ringing through the air. People were clustered together around tables, dancing close together in the thin strip of cleared-away space that was serving as a dance floor. Behind the beer-sticky wood of the counter, three bartenders bustled backwards and forwards, navigating one another with a practiced ease. 

Sam Winchester surveyed the people closest to him with fox-slanted eyes, taking a long drag from his beer bottle as his eyes located his brother, tucked away in the corner by the pool table. 

Dean met his eyes with a wink, resting a hip against the corner of the table as he inclined his head in clear invitation. The youngest Winchester’s eyes flitted briefly to his father – leaning casually against the bar, making small talk with one of the locals – before he pushed off from the wall and began to weave his way across the room, effortlessly stepping out of the way of the bar’s drunker patrons.

Halfway there, he was stopped by a hand on his arm. 

It was clammy and cold, despite the claustrophobic heat of too many bodies pressed together, and big enough that fingers touched thumb as it closed around his wrist. Sam turned his attention from his brother, breathing in deep as he registered an odd edge to the stranger’s scent – something sharp and tangy. It reminded him oddly of lemon vodka, heady and strong, and his eyes flew around to take in the clean-shaven face of a handsome stranger.

“Buy you a drink?” He asked with a grin, voice husky and low. There was an invitation there, and Sam felt his grin widen a little as the guy’s hand slipped to his own, tangling their fingers together. 

“Beer.” Sam nodded, flashing a quick grin. The guy shifted past him, and Sam grinned a little at the dark scowl he glimpsed on his brother’s face as he followed the older man to the bar. Dean watched unrepentantly, green eyes catching the dim light of the bar and reflecting it back, making them look eerily bright and piercing. The stranger didn’t seem to notice. “The name’s Sam.”

“Justin,” The brunette grinned, slipping his hand to the small of the hunter’s back and guiding him to a bar stool. Three seats down, John finished the last of his beer and slipped seamlessly into the crowd as if he’d never been there. “So what brings you to town, Sam?”

The teenager shrugged his shoulders, tilting his head and fluttering his eyelashes coyly. He shifted slightly in his seat, pressing his side more firmly against Justin’s. The strange scent hit him again, leaving him feeling almost lightheaded – his limbs felt loose and relaxed, and it made Sam’s spine stiffen a little. “Family business. We’re only here for a couple of days.”

“Now that,” Justin grinned, leaning forward until Sam could feel the older man’s breath fanning across his own lips. “Is a damn shame.”

Sam’s tongue darted out to wet his lips on instinct alone, and his hazel eyes observed the sharp breath that the older man sucked in, eyes focused on the small movement. Dean had always called him a tease, and Sam played that to his full advantage, slowly and deliberately bringing his beer to his lips and draining half of it in one long pull.

Sure that he had the stranger’s attention, he grinned slow and deliberate. His hand stretched out, rested lightly on top of Justin’s, and he knocked their knees together. “Just means that I’ll have to make the most of what little time I have left...”

“Fuck,” Justin breathed, looking almost surprised as the word spilled from his lips. He nodded eagerly, nearly knocking his beer bottle off the bar’s counter as he slipped from his seat, eyes quickly locating the green neon sign pointing towards the exit. He tugged Sam towards the door by his hand, and the werewolf felt a familiar curl of excitement in the pit of his stomach.

Justin’s body posture seemed to shift as they walked – no longer nervous or anxious, but collected and very much in control, hand tightening around the werewolf’s. For his part, Sam felt a familiar thrum of energy through his veins – the same feeling that washed over him with every change, a familiar adrenaline that came coupled with the urge to chase and hunt and fight. 

He stepped lightly over the small bucket that was propping the fire escape open, allowing Justin to lead him further into the darkness of the narrow alleyway beside the bar. They skirted around a dumpster, a just a few feet from the door, Justin tugged him into the shadows and crowded him up against the wall.

The man’s body pressed against his in a long line of heat, hands reaching down for the buckle of his belt even as he dipped his head towards Sam’s neck. Before he could make contact, he was jerked backwards by the collar of his jacket, and Sam grinned into the darkness as the familiar scent of his brother washed over him.

Justin whirled around, eyes suddenly glowing a superhuman blue, and was greeted with the sight of one very pissed off Dean Winchester. His face darkened, the edges of his mouth edging up into a snarl and eyes narrowing.

“What the hell is going on here?” He snarled, wisely choosing not to advance on the elder of the Winchester brothers. It seemed that he’d finally clued into the fact that there was something amiss here – that he’d been tricked, and had unknowingly headed blindly for the exact place that Sam was trying to herd him towards.

“You do realize that you were only supposed to lead him into the alley, don’t you?” Dean asked instead of arguing, eyes locked on Sam rather than the now cornered Incubus. “Not actually let him fuck you against the wall like a simpering little barfly.”

“Why don’t we concentrate on killing him for the moment, Dean?” Their father’s voice asked. The Incubus twisted around, panic crossing his features briefly as he realized for the first time that he was completely surrounded. There was no chance of him getting away, and he knew it.

His eyes flew to Sam, and then darted across to Dean. “You’re not even human, are you? What do you want with me?”

Dean shrugged. “To see you dead? It’s really not that hard to figure out.”

“Am I on your territory or something? I can skip town – I know how territorial you shifters get.”

John growled, low in his throat. “Werewolves, actually. As for this being our territory… no. But we don’t appreciate people hunting down and killing humans – the more often it happens, the more likely they are to find out about us and start killing back. You’ve met other hunters, surely? Things like you are the reason that they even exist.”

The Incubus’ eyes narrowed. “So what, you’ve switched teams? Working for the hunters like little housepets? How noble of you.”

Dean growled low in his throat at the insinuation, and John moved before the Incubus even saw it coming – hand shifting even as he swung it towards the creature’s throat, growing claws sharp enough to tear through skin and muscle. For a long moment, the Incubus remained standing, face frozen into an expression of shock, and then his knees gave out from underneath him and he fell to the floor with a thud. 

Sam sighed. “That was anticlimactic. I was hoping for some kind of fight.”

“If you want a fight, baby brother,” Dean growled, crossing the distance between them slowly, backing Sam towards the wall for the second time that evening. “Just say the word.”

“I can think of better things to do,” The younger Winchester replied breathily, surging forwards to kiss his brother. Dean’s hands came up instinctively, one tangling in his hair and the other gripping his hip, holding him still as he angled his head to explore deeper into the younger man’s mouth.

John sighed. “Seriously, boys? Can you just wait ten minutes? Help me shift this body to the truck and I’ll take it out to burn it. You two don’t even have to come with me, how does that sound?”

The two young werewolves reluctantly pulled apart, Dean nodded his head even as he ducked down to nip sharply on his brother’s collarbone. Sam shivered at the sensation, tipping his head back and pulling Dean just a little bit closer.

“Now, boys.”

Dean made a grumbling, feral noise deep in his throat as he pulled away, shooting a dark glare at his father. John grinned and otherwise appeared completely unfazed, reaching down to grab the dead Incubus’ arms; the elder of the two Winchester brothers tossed Sam his keys, and reluctantly bent down to grab the creature’s feet.

Between the three of them, it was less than a minute later that they had the Incubus’ body wrapped in a tarp and secured in the bed of John’s truck.

John eyed the two of them for a long moment. “I’ll be gone for a few hours. Try not to trash the motel room, okay? I don’t want any repeats of last time.”

Dean grinned wickedly, pressing a hand on his brother’s back and nudging him towards the passenger side car door. Sam didn’t need to be told twice.

 

**

 

The car ride back to the motel room was made in silence. 

There was an almost tangible tension buzzing underneath the surface, and every subtle shift of Sam’s hips had Dean’s hands tightening around the steering wheel until his knuckles were white. The younger man was clearly well aware of what he was doing, eyes glittering darkly with every streetlight that they passed, and a feral grin tugging at the edge of his mouth.

It wasn’t until the motel finally appeared in sight that his long, piano-players fingers slid their way over the bench seat to lightly squeeze his brother’s thigh. Dean swore loudly, clumsily parking the Impala in the bay outside of their motel room with a loud screech of breaks. 

At any other moment, he might have taken the time to straighten her up, make sure that she was neatly tucked between the lines in order to avoid some vindictive sonofabitch damaging her… and avoid Dean committing murder, as would likely be the result of that particular situation. As it was, it was all he could do to remember to lock her as he fumbled in his pocket for the motel door key.

Sam pressed up close behind him, fingers slipping under his older brother’s shirt and trailing patterns over the smooth skin of his hip.  
Finally, the door swung open and the two of them fell through. Dean tossed the key in the general direction of the rickety motel table without paying even a little attention as to where it landed, and had whirled on his brother before Sam even finished closing the door, pinning the younger wolf between the cold wood and his own body.

Sam shuddered, hands reaching up to tangle in his brother’s hair as their mouths met in a vicious kiss. Dean’s nails bit into the skin on his hips, threatening to break the skin and draw blood, and Sam ground them up with a bitten-off whimper as Dean pulled away, turning his attention to the younger man’s neck.

“Not so quick, Sammy,” he growled out, sharply biting down on the junction where neck met shoulder when Sam bucked his hips once more. “I’m gonna make you beg for it, baby.”

Sam’s head tipped back, banging off the door with a hollow thud as Dean’s hands slowly slipped down his shirt, tugging lightly on the end before bringing it up and over the younger wolf’s head in a smooth movement.

Sam’s hands reached out to return the favour, but Dean batted them away, stepping back a few feet and slowly removing his own shirt. Sam seemed to get with the program as the elder hunter reached for the buckle on his belt, quickly shedding himself of his own shoes and jeans.

“On the bed,” Dean panted, lightly shoving the younger man towards the object in question. Sam scowled, resisting for a long moment before he allowed himself to be tipped backwards.

“Not some little bitch,” he sniped, propping himself up on his elbows to glare at his brother. Dean was perturbed in the slightest, slowly climbing onto the bed and crawling over his brother, letting his body weight pin the young wolf’s slight frame to the mattress.

When he spoke, his voice was a deep rumble in his chest that Sam felt as much as heard. “Sure you are. You’re  _my_  little bitch.”

Sam wanted to deny it. He wanted to flip their positions and pin his brother to the mattress, show him that just because he was the youngest and the smallest, it didn’t mean that he was some weak little omega that needed to be taken care of. Unfortunately for his pride, his brother chose that moment to deliberately align their crotches and grind down, and all thoughts of protest fled from Sam’s brain in that very instant. 

“Jesus,” He groaned, back arching as his brother ground down again, rubbing their cocks together through the thin material of their boxer shorts and providing just enough friction to have arousal shooting through every inch of Sam’s being. “Fuck, Dean. Just get on with it already.”

The elder Winchester grinned, ducking his head for another kiss as he stretched out a hand and fumbled blindly on the nightstand for the bottle of lube that they always kept there. Sam smiled into the kiss, hand reaching out and snatching the lube with no effort, pressing it into his brother’s hand.

Dean pulled away to scowl at him. “Show off.”

Sam shrugged his shoulders as best as he could with his brother’s weight resting on him, shifting and shimmying his hips a little in order to slip his boxers free. They got as far as his knees before Dean rolled his eyes and reached behind him to tug them off, flicking the cap off the small bottle with his other hand.

He squirted a generous amount of the gel on his hand, slowly slipping his hand down to give Sam’s cock a few hard tugs. The seventeen-year-old’s back arched, pressing closer to his brother as he gasped harshly; in the dim, fluorescent light peeking through the gap in the motel room curtains, Dean’s wicked smile stood out vividly from the darkness around him.

His hand slipped lower yet, until Sam felt the tip of his finger press where he wanted it most. Whimpering deep in his throat, he bucked his hips, forcing the finger deep inside of him. Dean groaned low in his throat, gently removing the finger and replacing it slowly, working the younger man over so slowly that it felt like some kind of torture.

Beads of sweat glistened on Sam’s skin, cock hard and flushed and curving deliciously up towards his concave belly. He was whining low in his throat, an animalistic noise that only encouraged Dean to add another finger, to work them deeper and harder, ruthlessly rubbing against his brother’s prostate.

“Please, Dean,” Sam gasped eventually, hips bucking up to meet the slow glide of Dean’s fingers even as he pressed his head back into the pillow and started up at the older hunter with beseeching eyes. “Come on, fuck me already.”

Dean grinned, pausing to wipe his fingers on the bedspread next to Sam’s hip before shimmying out of his own boxers. His dick slapped against his toned stomach, leaving a trail of precome, and he once more picked up the forgotten bottle of lube, squirting some directly onto his cock. His hips jerked at the sensation, eyes fluttering shut as he closed his hand over his appendage for the first time, slowly soothing the moisture over it.

Sam made a small, desperate noise, panting as he watched his brother prepare himself.

“Dean,” He gasped again, reaching out to wrap his hand around the older man’s wrist, tugging him closer. “Please. I need you.”

The bigger wolf allowed himself to be tugged forwards, until Sam felt entirely surrounded by him – his warm, spicy scent and the familiar feel of his warm skin; hot breath on his neck, and the press of a hand on his stomach. 

He didn’t bother to line himself up, just tipped his head to nip and kiss on the younger man’s neck, rutting blindly until his cock finally hit Sam’s entrance, and then he  _pushed._  The younger wolf cried out, body arching so sharply that it looked almost painful, muscles quivering at the intense sensation of being stuffed so full.

Dean would never stop loving this. The dark, possessive part of him loved how much Sam wanted this – how he  _needed_  to get fucked deep and hard the same way he needed oxygen or water. The way his body seemed to fit so perfectly underneath Dean’s, narrow hips settled inside Dean’s own, rubbing together as the older man ground down hard.

His dick sunk impossibly deeper, and Sam panted harshly as his hips bucked at the sensation; his muscles were fluttering around his brother’s hard length, and just when he thought he might adjust to the sensation, Dean reared back and fucked down roughly.

Sam cried out, wrapping his legs around his brother’s as the older man set a brutal pace, his own cock leaking against his stomach as Dean’s length hit his prostate dead on, time after time.

He shifted his legs, changing the angle of his hips, and Dean’s next thrust had him crying out once more. His eyes rolled back into his head, cock jerking once before spilling across his stomach. Dean didn’t slow, didn’t so much as hesitate as he bit hard against the younger man’s neck, gripping the skin there as he picked up the pace even more. Sam’s muscles were contracting almost violently around his cock, leaving both of them trembling, and he could feel the sticky sensation of Sam’s come smeared between their stomachs. He came just seconds after his brother, the world whiting out almost completely as he began to shoot his release deep inside of his brother.

He fucked himself through it, hips moving shakily until the pleasure shifted more and more towards pain, his cock softening. Only then did he pull out, collapsing onto his side next to his brother, one arm draped over the younger man’s chest. 

Sam’s lungs were heaving unsteadily, skin sticky with sweat, but when he turned tired eyes towards his brother, he was grinning widely.

Dean gently tugged him closer, rolling onto his side as he pulled the younger man in tight and spooned up behind him so closely that he could feel Sam’s rapid heartbeat beating next to his own. He reached blindly for the covers, gently tucking them around the two of them, and nuzzled his head into the back of Sam’s. 

“Hmm,” Sam said fuzzily, sliding his arm next to Dean’s and tangling their fingers together. “We should get cleaned up.”

Dean pressed a kiss to the soft skin at the nape of his neck.

“Yeah,” He agreed, even as he could feel his eyes begin to slip shut. “In a minute.”


	4. Part Three

It was the sound of their father’s voice that woke Dean; a familiar baritone drawl that was unusually soft in the quiet of the morning. Yawning, he blinked his eyes open, grimacing a little when he noticed the way that the skin of his stomach was sticking unpleasantly to his brother’s back. Sam shifted slightly as Dean slowly peeled himself away, and for a moment the elder wolf half-expected his brother to wake up and scowl at him; instead, the kid nuzzled his head into the pillow and curled himself into an even tighter ball.

His eyes finally located their father, leaning against one of the counters in the small motel kitchen. He grinned at Dean a little, tossing his phone on the cracked surface of the table.

“You could’ve gotten cleaned up before you went to sleep,” He reprimanded lightly. 

Dean shrugged his shoulders. “Figured that you’d just be happy that we stuck to the bed. No broken tables to report to the manager, this time.”

John grinned, shaking his head fondly.

“Who was on the phone?”

The eldest Winchester’s smile turned a little darker at the edges. “That was one Bobby Singer. Seems like he’s worked out who our demon is – goes by the name of Azazel. Ranked high enough that he’s even got a mention in the bible.”

The twenty-one year old frowned a little. As far as things went, the Winchesters were more than adequately able to take out most other supernatural creatures; hell, they’d taken out more than a few demons in the nine years since Azazel had killed Mary Winchester in Sam’s bedroom and their quest for revenge had begun. They’d never been faced with anything powerful enough that it was in the goddamn Bible before, though.

He glanced towards his brother, taking in the younger man’s still sleeping form. He looked deceptively innocent, sleeping – it was hard to believe that he’d never lost a fight from the moment he hit his teenage years, that he was quick and sly and cunning, and he knew more ways to kill a person than anyone could fully comprehend.

“You got a plan?” He asked his father after a long moment.

John raised a piece of paper in the air, grinning wickedly. “I have in my hand the address of some kind of hunter’s Roadhouse, where we will find a young MIT drop out by the name of Ash. According to Singer, he can help us track the yellow eyed sonofabitch.”

**

Ellen had met a lot of scary people in the years since she’d married Bill Harvelle. 

Hunters weren’t, as a rule of thumb, exactly your bog-standard group of people. Most of them were battle worn and scarred, paranoid and – at times – more than a little trigger-happy. Ellen had no disillusions about the fact that, at any time, ninety-five percent of the Roadhouse’s clientèle were armed to the teeth and bore no compunction about using the weapons stashed under their clothes.

Usually, it was some sort of sense of comradeship that kept things sailing smoothly at the roadhouse. Whilst there was no way of avoiding a few scuffles here and there, the Roadhouse’s patrons tended to stick in their own little groups and leave everyone else alone. In the twenty years working behind the bar, Ellen could count on two hands the number of bar fights that had required the intervention of either her or Bill.

After a few years, she’d begun to find the hunting community a lot less terrifying than she had at the start. She began making friends, surprised to find that Bill wasn’t the only hunter out there with a wife and kids, and over time she settled into her new life. 

And then the Winchesters showed up.

**

The bar was surprisingly busy for a Tuesday afternoon. 

Quite honestly, Ellen had been anticipating the quiet evening to do her weekly stock checks and perhaps coax Jo into helping her shift around some of the boxes in the basement; she’d been more than a little disappointed when a hunter by the name of Freeman dropped by and alerted her to a large party of fifteen hunters headed in her direction. 

Word had it that they were headed through to Buffalo, where a large nest of vamps was consuming more than a small chunk of the local population. It wasn’t the first time that Ellen had heard of hunters banding together, but it  _was_  the first time that she’d heard of so many of them teaming up at once. By the time that they’d arrived, split between seven trucks and two slightly smaller cars, she’d fully prepared herself to be witness to be more than a few arguments over the duration of the evening.

There was a reason that hunters liked to work separately, after all.

In the end, it turned out that there was seventeen of them in total. Most of them, Ellen recognized from previous visits to the Roadhouse – one or two of them had even worked with Bill, back before that goddamn demon had stolen her husband from her. A few of them were new faces, and the cynical part of her wondered just how many of them would make it back from the hunt. 

Her evening was spent pouring beer after beer, barring a brief interval that had spent once again giving Ash a firm lecture about smoking pot in her bar, and she was just starting the think that she might have gotten off lucky when the door swung open. 

For a moment, Ellen honestly didn’t notice the problem. The tattered old jukebox was churning out Bon Jovi’s _Dead or Alive_ , and she was happily humming along to herself as she wiped down the sticky surface of the top. Distantly, she recognized the sound of the door swinging open and the sudden lull in conversation; it was the same every time someone new turned up. They’d step inside, everyone would make a quick and paranoid assessment of one another, and then everyone would start talking again as if nothing had happened.

Except the silence was dragging on too long. Ellen’s head shot up, taking in the three figures lurking in her doorway. 

There was a man roughly her own age at the front, spearheading the little arrows-head formation that they’d fallen into; his hair was dark, shot through with the faintest glint of silver, and his eyes were dark and cold. Even from across the room, the sight of them made Ellen shiver a little.

Behind him, two younger boys stood shoulder to shoulder. There was something in the clench of their jaw, the similar way that they stood, that alerted her to the fact that they were probably the stranger’s sons; the shorter one was grinning cockily, mischievous grin and green eyes that just seemed to radiate trouble. His brother was taller by an inch at most, and his eyes were sweeping steadily over the room; when they locked with hers she was surprised by the intensity there, and the almost hypnotic way that they seemed to shift color in the dim light.

They would have been beautiful as individuals. Together they were just as much intimidating as they were striking.

“Holy shit,” Someone breathed from one of the barstools to her left, voice ringing awkwardly in the near-silent bar. “They’re the goddamn Winchesters.”

Ellen’s eyes widened as the stranger’s words suddenly jolted her brain to make the same connection. Over the last couple of years, the Winchesters had become a sort of legend in the Roadhouse – a common topic of gossip that never served to keep her entertained. Honestly, she hadn’t even really believed that they existed.

There’d been enough people spouting off stories about the three mysterious men to pique her curiosity, but as soon as people had started suggesting that they might be more than human themselves, she’d dismissed the whole thing as the drunken ramblings of some far-away hunter trying to big up one of his hunts somehow. It wouldn’t be the first time that a rumor had spun wildly out of control in the hunting community. 

Now, though, she began to wonder if those rumors were true. 

The bar seemed to be in some kind of limbo. All eyes were on the Winchester men, and they weren’t moving; instead, the three of them stood in the doorway and, slowly, the father began to grin. When he finally moved, it wasn’t a sudden jerk towards the middle of the room, or a hesitant step inside. Instead, he moved with the grace of a predator, steel-toed boots making no sound at all as he crossed the room, his boys never more than a step behind him.

For the first time in years, Ellen found herself pressing her knee against the barrel of her shotgun for reassurance, out of an instinctive urge to know that she had some way to defend herself if things turned ugly. It sure as hell looked like it was heading that way.

None of the Winchesters seemed particularly fazed by the situation, from what she could tell, but she could practically see the hunters around them bristling. It seemed that, hunters or not, nobody was in any rush to welcome the Winchester three into their fold. 

Ellen forced herself to pull in a deep breath and release it slowly as John finally dropped into the stool directly next to her. His boys hopped up on the two stools to his right, and she couldn’t help but second guess her estimate that they were brother’s when she observed the deliberate way that the older one tangled their feet together. Lovers, more likely.

“What can I get you?” She asked amicably, almost amazed that her voice came out strong and sure and without even the slightest trace of the tremble she’d feared would be there.

“Three beers,” The eldest one answered curtly, and then leant back in his chair as she slid them across the counter. “And if you could point us in the direction of Ash, that would be great.”

Ellen felt her motherly instincts kick into overdrive. Ash might not actually be her son, but he was a big enough part of her family that she sometimes felt like it – these strangers looked dangerous, and the last thing she was going to do was to lead them to him. Unfortunately, the young man’s sense of self-preservation was apparently severely lacking; even as she opened her mouth to inform the stranger that she didn’t know he was talking about, Ash rose from his stool.

“What can I do for you, guys?” He asked curiously. He didn’t seem in the least bit worried about what their intentions were, and she couldn’t keep the scowl from her face as she mentally tried to work out whether he was still high or honestly stupid enough to drop himself in it like that. He crossed the room, settling into the stool next to the eldest Winchester with no hesitation whatsoever, and Ellen reluctantly concluded that it had to be the latter.

“The name’s John Winchester.” The dark-haired man introduced. “These are my boys, Sam and Dean. Singer sent us – said you could help us track a demon by the name of Azazel.”

Ash raised an eyebrow. “Azazel? He’s pretty biblical, dude. If you’ve got a set of parameters, then I could maybe hook you up. You said Bobby sent you?”

John nodded, and Ellen let her eyes flicker over to his sons. Their heads were bowed close together, the two of them talking quietly; there was something in the way that they were sat, the way that Dean’s hand rested low on his brother’s back and their knees pressed together, that made her feel uncomfortable. She fought back the urge to shudder and decided not to think about it. Some things were best ignored.

“Sweet.” Ash grinned. “My laptop’s in my room. Why don’t you come around back and we’ll see what we can figure out?”

John grinned, a quick flash of teeth that looked almost sinister, and shifted to his feet in a graceful movement. For a moment, Ellen almost found herself insisting that she go with them – in the end, it was the realization that the boys were staying seated that kept her behind the bar. As much as she hated to leave Ash alone and unprotected, the idea of calling Jo in to watch the bar whilst the two Winchester boys were sitting there seemed infinitely more disastrous. 

Anxiety fluttered in her stomach as she watched Ash lead John towards the back of the bar, where the little room that he had claimed all those months ago was tucked away. Almost comically, hunters shifted awkwardly out of the way of Winchester as he passed, a few of them even going as far as to avert their eyes. It didn’t make her feel any better.

Sam shifted in his seat, drawing her attention back to the two remaining Winchesters, and she hurriedly grabbed a dirty glass off the bar when his hazel eyes flickered up to meet hers. In the dim lights of the bar, it was hard to tell whether they were gold or blue – instead, they seemed to constantly shift, and it made something lurch uncomfortably in the pit of her stomach as he watched her. 

She busied herself with doing menial tasks that she usually left to Jo; collecting and washing the dirty glasses from along the bar’s counter, placing them back on the shelves that they were stored on. She changed out the empty bottle of Jack, re-filled the large ice bucket, and felt her shoulders begin to relax a little as the people around her fell into a stilted impression of normalcy.

She did her best to keep her eyes off Sam and Dean, but couldn’t help but shoot a quick glance at them every now and again. They didn’t seem at all bothered by the people around them, heads still bowed together and voices hushed as they talked quietly. She caught snatches of their conversations every now and then as she passed, gradually piecing together the clues that each snippet gave her, and eventually concluded that they were planning some kind of run in the woods. Quite honestly, she’d expected something a little more dramatic.

She was relieved that they showed no signs of moving. That they apparently had no intentions of trying to befriend the other hunters, or even trying for a game of pool. She was sure that their reception would have been more than a little hostile if they had. 

Roughly a half hour or so since their father had disappeared off after Ash, she noticed that their beer bottles were empty. Quite honestly, she considered leaving it until they flagged her down for another, before a sense of duty forced her hand. It was her business, at the end of the day, and she’d done her best to run it for the past twenty years without judging any of its patrons (with the exception of Gordon, because he was a mean son of a bitch and Jo had harbored one hell of a crush on him until he tried to use her for bait). 

She stopped next to them the next time her errands carried her past, reaching out to collect the beer bottles. Dean’s eyes swung from his brother to her so fast that she almost flinched; they were vividly green, piercing and hard, and she was reminded of the cold stare of a snake when she looked into them. 

“Can I get you another?”

Dean’s face broke into a small smile, and he shifted his weight on his stool, crossing his arms on the counter and leaning forwards. It was the first time anything had properly taken his attention from his brother since the moment that they’d sat down, and Ellen instantly regretted her decision to offer them a refill.

Sam, on the other hand, just looked bored. He reached for a beermat, tipping it onto a corner and somehow managing to balance it there as he knocked it into a spin, long fingers already reaching for another. She’d never seen anyone manage to do that before, and was impressed despite herself.

Dean followed her gaze, grinning widely as he leant forwards even further, voice deep and husky. “Believe me, that’s not the least of what Sam here can do with his hands.”

She felt a flush make its way across her face, leaving her blushing scarlet like a schoolgirl at the open innuendo in his voice. Her stomach churned and she could feel a lump in her throat, because Jesus Christ, they were  _brothers._  She opened her mouth to speak, but was beaten to it by a familiar deep voice.

“Think you should learn to be a little more polite, son.” Charlie Grayson drawled, shooting Ellen a look that was genuinely apologetic. He’d been a good friend of Bill’s, and after his death, the older hunter had taken it upon himself to see that Ellen and Jo were alright. Hell, she knew for a fact that after the whole fiasco with Gordon and Jo, he’d beaten the other hunter black and blue without ever asking for his side of the story. “That ain’t no way to talk to a lady.”

Dean’s spine stiffened visibly, and Sam turned his attention from his beermat to look at Charlie’s face over the curve of his brother’s spine, shadowed face unreadable. The older boy’s head swung around slowly, and his expression was almost frightening.

“I’m not your son.” He answered quietly. His voice was dark, the amused rumble from before having evaporated completely, and Ellen hated herself when her knees went a little weak at the sound of it. “And you’d do well to remember that.”

Charlie frowned, sitting up a little straighter in her seat. She knew him well enough to know that he hadn’t meant anything by his comment, it had just been a friendly warning for them to watch what they said, but it was clear that things were about to escalate. She couldn’t think of any way to stop it, brain going silent for a brief moment, and she wondered absently if this was what a deer felt in the moment that it first registered the oncoming headlights of a car.

“Damn right,” Charlie scowled. His southern drawl had come out full force, the same way it always did when he was angry or drunk or tired, and she half-expected him to spit out a mouthful of chewing tobacco like a character from a western. “No son of mine would ever talk to a lady like that. You should be ashamed of yourself. Didn’t your daddy never teach you no manners?”

For a moment, she was sure that all hell was going to break loose, right there in the middle of her goddamn bar. And then, miraculously, Dean’s shoulders relaxed and he let a lazy smile cross his face. It certainly wasn’t friendly, not by a long shot, but it was a hell of a lot better than a punch.

“Clearly not,” He offered, with a shake of his head, turning his attention once more to Ellen. “We’ll take those refills, now.”

The woman nodding her head, quickly grabbing two bottles and popping the lids. She slid them easily across the bar, trying to ignore the restless way that Sam was shifting on his seat.

“Pussy,” A voice called out, and Ellen’s head whipped around to find Walt – one of Gordon’s little group of followers – sitting a few stools down from Sam. “What’s the matter, Winchester? Can’t hold your own in a fight without your daddy there to back you up?”

Dean was moving before she even really registered what was happening, crossing the distance between himself and Walt in a few short strides, slamming the man against the pillar that jutted out from the bar with an arm across his throat, fist clenched in the material of his shirt. The payphone’s receiver fell out of the holder, clattering against the counter.

Ellen’s eyes flew to Sam, hoping naively that he might call his brother off in an effort to prevent a scene. Instead, the younger Winchester yawned widely and arched his back in a lazy stretch. He couldn’t have looked less bothered if he tried.

Face dangerously close to Walt’s, Dean’s voice was more of a growl than anything else. “Wanna find out just how well I can hold my own, Walt? I’d be happy to show you.”

Walt’s eyes narrowed, and he twisted his body, swinging his arm around. Ellen caught the metallic gleam of the knife headed towards Dean’s throat in the same moment that the hunter swung his arm up to block the advance. The silver knife just barely nicked the flesh of his forearm, a miracle in itself given the speed of the blow. Dean didn’t react at all, but Ellen found herself sucking in a sharp breath, because the wound was _sizzling_.

She may not have been a hunter herself, but she knew what that meant. There was only a few kinds of creatures that would have that reaction to silver – skinwalkers, shapeshifters and werewolves making up the main three – and none of them were human. Apparently, the rumours had been right for once.

A split second later, and Walt wasn’t the only hunter with a knife in his hand.

It was like a chain reaction rippling through the bar as the hunter’s realized what had just happened. Guns and knives were produced like some kind of magic trick, popping out of seemingly nowhere, and Ellen could feel her own hands trembling by her sides. This was bad.  
Sam yawned again, swinging around on his stool to face the room; he was kicking his legs backwards and forwards like a small kid, eyes skipping from hunter to hunter as he assessed them all individually. It was like some kind of Mexican standoff, the Winchesters vs. the room, everyone waiting with baited breath for someone to make a move. 

Brain finally kicking into gear, Ellen reached blindly for her gun, feeling the fear bleed out of her muscles as the sound of it being racked shot through the bar. Sam twisted to look at her curiously over one shoulder, and he mouth split into a feral grin that was so much like his fathers it was eerie. 

“Gonna shoot us?” He drawled. He didn’t sound angry or scared, but simply amused at the entire situation. He was still leaning back against the bar, the picture of relaxation, and Ellen wished that she could believe it was just an act.

She shrugged her shoulders. “Haven’t decided yet. What are you?”

“Werewolves,” Sam admitted happily, taking a long swallow of his beer. “Non-lunars, to be specific. I know just how much hunters love their specifics.”

“Right,” Ellen nodded, doing her best to act like there was nothing abnormal happening. “And what the hell are werewolves doing in a goddamn hunter bar?”

“Because we’re also hunters.” Dean’s voice chimed in. A quick glance revealed that he’d managed to get the knife out of Walt’s hand and it was currently impaled in the wooden pillar supporting the payphone; the hunter was still being supported there by an arm across his throat, but Dean had lost the dangerous intensity that he’d had only moments before, apparently amused by the shift in conversation. “And like you said, this is a hunter bar.”

Honestly, Ellen couldn’t really deny that.

Apparently nobody in the Roadhouse knew when to keep their mouths shut (and honestly, it was a wonder that half of the occupants of the room had lived as long as they had if tonight was any demonstration of their common sense), she didn’t have to try.

“Bullshit.” Roy announced, standing just a few feet away from where his friend was pinned. He hadn’t tried to pull Dean off, which Ellen was currently counting her blessings for, but his hands were curled into fists by his sides and he looked more than a little pissed off. “You’re no better than any of the other things that we hunt. Hell, we should just kill you now.”

Sam rolled his eyes, sliding off his stool and landing lightly on his feet. A few of the hunters with their weapons trained on Dean shifted their attention to Sam, but most of them seemed to believe that Dean was the bigger threat. Ellen couldn’t quite bring herself to see it, because while Dean was bigger and stronger and currently had his arm pressed against a hunter’s throat, Sam was steadily making his way across the room with those hypnotic eyes focused on Roy.

He moved like an animal, calculated movements and soundless feet, and Ellen’s mouth dried up. Her shotgun swung around to train on him.

She expected him to stop a few feet short of the other hunter, or perhaps to lunge for him, but he did neither. Instead, he sidled up to the older man slowly, pressing in close – Ellen knew enough about Roy to know that he wasn’t all too opposed to having a hot young man pressed against him, and the hunter didn’t shove him away.

Instead, his eyes widened in what appeared to be panic, and he raised his hands in the universal expression of surrender.

“That hurts my feelings,” Sam said quietly. His voice held that same raspy quality that Dean had used on her before, and he might only be a teenager, but he sure as hell knew what he was doing. Roy hesitated, clearly unsure of how to react, eyes shooting to Walt as if looking for some kind of guidance. “You wouldn’t really kill me, would you?”

Slowly, unbelievably, Roy shook his head. 

A loud laugh broke the tension, and Ellen turned to find John Winchester stood on the other side of the room, grinning wide and honestly for the first time since he’d arrived. Ash was stood a little behind him, one hand clutching a bottle of beer and the other scratching his head in apparent confusion; a mutilated laptop was tucked under the werewolf’s arm, and Ellen figured that he’d gotten whatever it was that he’d come for.

“Boys,” John said lightly. The two young men reacted instantly; Dean released his hold on Walt with one last shove, and Sam moved away from Roy’s side, bouncing lightly across the floorboards to scoop up his beer bottle and drain the last dregs of it. John simply rolled his eyes.

He waited until his youngest son had finished before finally turning to address Ellen, paying no attention to the shotgun she held in her hand, eyes never so much as flitting towards it.

“Thanks for your help,” He told her, winking one of those dark eyes in her direction. “I think we’ll be seeing you soon.”

Ellen forced a smile, lowering the shotgun away from her shoulder as the three of them unhurriedly made their way towards the door. None of them looked back as they stepped outside, and it wasn’t until the door had shut firmly behind them that Ellen finally allowed herself to heave a sigh of relief.

She reached for a bottle of vodka and a shot glass with trembling fingers.

“If those three never come back here,” She told Ash lightly, as he settled into the stool opposite her. “I’ll die a happy woman. That was perhaps the most nerve-wracking experience of my whole life. Even worse than that vampire hunt in Missouri, I’m telling you.”

“Seriously?” Ash raised an eyebrow, looking genuinely surprised. “Huh. I thought they were kind of cool. Totally badass.”

Ellen barely resisted the urge to smack him upside the head.


	5. Part Four

“So remind me again how that thing actually works?” Dean asked, leaning against the kitchen counter and watching his father curiously. John was hunched over a motel room table, the laptop-like creation that Ash had given him whirring away in front of him; it was a noisy piece of technology, emitting a high pitched buzz that irritated Dean’s ears to no end. 

“For the third time,” John sighed. “It tracks all of the early warning signs that the demon has – electrical storms, crop failures… suspicious house fires. It will let us know where the demon’s going to turn up next, before he actually gets there.”

Dean raised an eyebrow. “And you’re sure it’ll work?”

“From what he explained, I don’t see any reason that it shouldn’t.” John shrugged. “And at this moment in time, it’s the best resource we have to find the thing.”

From his position perched on one of the counter tops, Sam snorted slightly.

“And when we do find it, how exactly are we supposed to kill it?” He demanded. “We’re talking a high-level demon. That means our usual tricks aren’t going to work – holy water, consecrated ground… hell, even our exorcisms probably aren’t strong enough.”

John hesitated. “Singer has a theory. Some kind of gun made by Samuel Colt – apparently, it has the power to kill anything on earth. Azazel included.”

“Right.” Dean snorted. “You don’t look too convinced about that.”

“He has no idea where it is,” The older werewolf admitted. “Some hunter called Elkins claimed that he’d found it, but he was taken out by vampires a few months ago. Singer’s been through his property since then, and he couldn’t find it.”

Sam nodded. “So that means that either it was never there to begin with, or the vamps took it home as a souvenir. Fantastic. So I’m guessing that means that our next line of business is a vamp hunt, hey?”

John nodded, and the young werewolf sighed, letting his head fall back and bounce off the overhead kitchen cabinet with a dull thud. Vampires, in Sam’s opinion, were pretty much the worse possible things to hunt. 

Not only could they recognize a werewolf by both sight and scent, making them incredibly hard to ambush, but they were also one of few creatures on the planet that could match them for both speed and pure brutality. Not to mention the fact that, most likely due to modern culture, they tended to have a real bee in their bonnets about the werewolf race as a whole.

The predator in Sam liked having advantage over the things that they hunted. Liked looking at an incubus or a wendigo or black dog and knowing without doubt that he would be walking away from the situation unharmed; liked the knowledge that, by the end of the night, he would be leaving triumphant. His father and brother, on the other hand, were blood-born alphas, and they sought out and actively enjoyed the challenge of taking on something that could kill them just as easily as they could kill it.

The youngest werewolf didn’t think that would ever make sense to him.

“Come on, Sammy,” Dean grinned, planting his hands on the younger man’s thighs and leaning into the gap between his legs. “It’ll be fun. Track them down, have a little play and then tear their heads right off their necks. Easy as pie.”

Sam rolled his eyes, but he couldn’t help but admit to himself that Dean’s enthusiasm was frustratingly catchy. 

“They’re just as strong as we are,” He pointed out. “And we’ll be outnumbered.”

Dean grinned wider, leaning forwards until their lips were almost touching. “Come on, baby. I’ll protect you. Won’t let any of them hurt my pretty little omega.”

“Asshole.” Sam scowled, shoving his laughing brother away. “I’m more than capable of defending myself. Don’t get all protective alpha on me, or else I’ll be forced to kick your ass on principle alone, and I’d hate to damage your pride before a big fight.”

“Come on then,” Dean goaded, eyes dark. “Prove it.”

John tucked his chair a little closer to the table, glancing briefly at his youngest son over his shoulder. “Watch the furniture.”

Sam was already moving; launching himself off the counter and using the momentum to send him crashing straight into his brother. Dean’s arms came around instinctively, cushioning their fall as they slammed onto the unyielding motel carpet; he twisted as soon as his back hit the floor, grabbing for Sam’s wrists as he pinned the younger man underneath him.

Sam didn’t hesitate in ducking under one of the flailing arms and driving an elbow into the tender flesh a few inches below Dean’s armpit, hitting the gap between two ribs with uncanny aim. Dean rolled away from the blow, shooting out a leg to catch Sam in the knee and send him off balance as the kid rolled on top of him.

The younger man yelped, more surprise than pain, and Dean flipped him straight back over onto his back. He scowled, bucking his hips up impatiently, grinning widely when it brought their crotches into contact. His eyes darkened with lust, staring up into his brother’s, and Dean frowned.

“Don’t try that seduction crap on me,” he groused irritably, tightening his hold against his brother’s wrists. “It ain’t gonna work, Sammy.”

Sam grinned, grinding up again, feeling his brother’s already half-heard cock begin to respond as he let his eyelids fall shut a little more.

“Who said I was trying anything?”

“Bitch.” Dean snapped, but he bent down even as he said it, pressing their mouths together in a hard and dirty kiss. Sam’s hands tangled in the back of his shirt, hips bucking up again, and Dean was just starting to get into it when the room shifted around him and he suddenly found himself on his back. 

Sam was straddling his hips, legs tangled around Dean’s to keep him down and hands gripping his forearms. Dean wriggled, realizing that he was well and truly screwed, and swore under his breath.

“I honestly don’t know how you fall for that every time,” Sam teased, keeping him pinned for a few seconds longer just to prove that he could, before he finally rose to his feet and reached out a hand to help his brother up after him. “You’re getting far too predictable.”

Dean scowled again, and across the room John laughed.

“It’s not like he’s wrong,” He announced. “Seriously. He’s the seventeen-year old… he should be the one that’s thinking with his dick whilst you’re wrestling. You’ll never be able to beat him if you slacken your grip every time he flutters his eyelashes at you.”

“Shut up,” He refuted irritably, stalking across the room to flop onto his bed, throwing his forearm over his face. It was only a few seconds that he felt the bed dip with his brother’s weight as Sam settled onto the bed next to him, curling into his older brother’s side. His shoulders were still shaking with silent laughter, but Dean didn’t hold it against him, the arm that was pillowing his younger brother’s head coming up to wrap around him.

“Little tease,” he muttered affectionately, arm still over his face.

Sam didn’t deny it, just wriggled a little closer and pressed a sweet kiss to his brother’s pulse point. “You love it.”

**

 

Daniel Elkins had lived in a cabin in Manning, Colorado. 

After his death, two of his hunting buddies by the names of James Earle and Christian West had claimed it as their own, as was often the case in the hunting community. From what Bobby had gathered, the two of them had seen this as the perfect opportunity to retire from the business, and had never tracked down the vampire nest that had killed their friend.

For once in their lives, that meant that the hunt was actually going to be easier than they’d anticipated. Bobby had collected Elkins’ research on the nest when he’d gone to build the other hunter’s pyre, and had passed on what he thought might help the Winchesters track the vampires down. 

Quite honestly, what little Elkins had managed to gather really wasn’t that useful. It was no wonder that the vampires had gotten to him before he’d had a chance to off them – he hadn’t even mapped out the locations of their kills, or begun looking for abandoned buildings that they might have claimed as their own.

What was useful, however, were the few polaroid pictures that he’d manage to gather of a few members of the nest. Two girls – one brunette and one long-legged blonde, and three guys of varying different statures. Judging by the sheer number of attacks in the local area, it seemed to make sense that they weren’t alone. As much as Sam disliked vampires, even he had to reluctantly admit that they usually only killed as much as they could consume. 

Thankfully, the three Winchester’s were no strangers to research. Just three hours, and a rather tedious trip to the library, after they’d first rolled into town and they’d managed to narrow down the search to three potential locations – two abandoned warehouses and an abandoned farm, all three of them sitting just inside the western borders of the small town. 

From there, it was simply a matter of figuring out how to stage a recon mission without the vampires catching onto them being there. Their usual tactic of using the cover of darkness to their advantage wouldn’t be much good against vampires – they might possibly have been the only creature even more well-adapted to the night than a werewolf was, and they really didn’t want to offer them an even greater advantage before the fight had even begun.

There was no way that the vampires would see them coming, not in the middle of the day, but they were still left with the irritating conundrum of their scent. 

In the end, John resorted to buying a strong-smelling deodorant from the local supermarket and dousing the three of them in enough of the stuff that it left the three of them sneezing for what felt like hours. 

“I am never going to get the smell of this stuff out of my car,” Dean groused, flicking irritably at his leather jacket as if it might help get rid of the smell. “Or my goddamn clothes.”

Sam shifted in his seat, wrinkling his nose when the movement caused a fresh wave of the sickly-strong smell to wash over him. “How do humans cope with this shit?”

Dean shrugged his shoulders irritably, face set into a dark expression. He’d been more than ready to kick some vampire ass and win them some kind of magical gun even before they’d gotten to this stage in the plan. Now he was just feeling blood thirsty, couldn’t wait to sink his teeth into flesh and tear it free.

There was no doubt in his mind that they’d shift to fight. In their human forms, the only real weapons that they had were the kind made by humans, and Dean always took it as a hit to his pride when they had to resort to such means. They were natural born killers, after all. They had claws and teeth and there was a satisfaction garnered from using them that he’d never felt in the recoil of a gun or the slick sensation of a blade piercing flesh.

He didn’t even care if that made him the monster that most hunters seemed to think he was. At the end of the day, every time he sunk teeth into flesh, he was helping them out just a little bit more – leaving them with one less supernatural sonofabitch to track down and hunt themselves. Humans were fragile. They broke far too easily, and it seemed almost ungrateful that so many of them were against having the Winchester’s on their side.

“This fight better not be a fucking anticlimax,” Dean snarled. “I swear to God, if I don’t get to tear at  _least_  a few heads from necks, then I’m going to lose my mind. There’s only so much that running through the woods in the middle of the night is going to do for my restraint. I hate acting like a freaking house pet.”

Sam rolled his eyes, shooting his brother an appropriately bored look. “Seriously? Next time can you choose to work your frustrations out on a wendigo? Or a black dog or something? You’re not gonna get very far in a vamp fight when the bloodlust is riding you that hard. You’ll get yourself killed.”

“It’s under control, Sam. Stop being such a whiny little bitch, alright? We’ll win this fight, and then I’ll take you back to the motel room and remind you what it’s like to be a real wolf, hey? See if we can’t bring a little of that bloodlust out in you.”

It irritated him, sometimes, how blasé his brother was about everything. Sam was a sneaky little thing, all fluttering eyelashes and an uncanny ability to seduce anything built to walk on two legs, and when he put his mind to it he was a much more deadly force than either John or Dean could ever hope to be. Instead, the kid mostly played things down – backed down where Dean would be throwing punches, looked for a get-out clause where Dean saw the perfect set up to start a fight.

Part of it was that the younger man was their pack omega, and neither of the Winchester men had exactly made a secret of the way that they coddled the youngest pack member. Dean remembered their father being like that with their mother, too, soft-eyed when he looked at her and always so  _careful_ , as if she might break if he pushed too hard. They were different with Sam than they were with each other; he was something to be cherished and protected, and sometimes Dean couldn’t help but spitefully think that it had all gone to his head.

Sometimes he saw a collared dog in the place of a wolf, a calmness about him that was a complete contradiction to everything he knew to be true. 

In a lot of ways, Sam was more wolf than either of them. He had that same restless energy, the intelligence behind his eyes and the raw power of an animal – in a fight, he was fast and unforgiving and deadly. Dean didn’t think he’d ever understand his brother. He wasn’t sure that he wanted to.

Sam grinned at him, razorblade sharp. “We both know that I’m wolf enough.”

 

**

 

In the end, they discovered the nest of nearly twenty-five vampires holed away in an abandoned farm building. The windows were all boarded up with thick wooden boards, lined up meticulously to prevent any light from seeping through, and the acrid stench of dead and rotting flesh hung sinisterly in the air. 

The boarded up windows meant that there was no way to know for sure what the layout of the property was on the inside. Sam was reluctant to go in blind, pacing restlessly along the invisible line that marked the edge of the property; his hands were stuffed into the pockets of his jeans, and his eyes were calculating as they locked onto the building.

“Farmhouse means it’s probably an open floorplan,” He mused out loud. “Living area, kitchen, dining room and probably a bathroom, judging from the size. Two stories, so there’ll probably be some upstairs just waiting to jump in whenever they get a chance, and more than likely a basement.”

“Right,” Dean nodded slowly, eyes flitting towards his father. “And where the hell are they going to be keeping a magical, all-killing gun in the middle of a farmhouse?”

John raised his eyebrow. “Guess we’re about to find out.”

He shifted his weight forwards, already starting to shift as he dropped to all fours, and Dean allowed himself one last moment of grinning widely to himself before he followed suit. In wolf form, their father was a brute of an animal; dark fur and dark eyes, he was like something out of a horror movie, a direct contrast to the light golden fur that had colored their mother’s coat.

As he did in many things, Dean took after his father – darker shades flowing along his back and his head, jutting across the top half of his face in a way that only made his eyes stand out more. His underbelly and legs were lighter, and there was the faintest gleam of gold in the fur of his tail, a small glimpse of his mother’s likeness. Sam was much lighter, not much bigger than their mother had been before she’d died, and his fur was the color of burnished gold. Two dark markings underneath his eye highlighted the constantly-shifting hazel, and gave him the impression of something almost haunting. 

Their mother had speculated, in the years before the fire, that there was something about Sam that was even more supernatural than his werewolf status. She hadn’t said much about it to Dean or his father, but the few comments that she’d made about the way he could so easily manipulate the people around him left little doubt as to what her thinking on the matter was.

Sometimes, watching his brother stand underneath the moonlight in the middle of the mountains, Dean wondered in perhaps she had been right.

In his wolf form, Sam seemed to lose the hesitance from before, nipping sharply at his father’s heels as he bounced between the two of them like a puppy. He was lighter on his feet than he had any right to be, moving over the ground as if he was weightless, and Dean could feel his own excitement building in anticipation of the fight that was about to come.

Their father took the lead, pausing for a long moment just outside of the front door, gathering as much power in his muscles as he could, and then he launched himself straight for the wooden obstacle. The door gave way with a sharp splintering sound, collapsing in on itself and propelling John straight inside the house. 

Sam and Dean were only seconds behind, and Dean had just enough time to register that Sam had been right about the open floor plan before the first of the vampires leapt for him, and he let his instincts take over.

They were smarter than he’d anticipated, tag-teaming him from different directions, but he didn’t let it deter him. It was easy enough to deflect the blows until one of them slipped up, and he leapt forwards as one of them stepped wrong, left the vulnerable flesh of their ankle open and exposed. His teeth hit bone with a sharp crunching noise, and the vamp’s head was detached within seconds of its body hitting the floor.

Something yowled sharply from beside him – the vamp’s mate, he assumed – and he turned his head just in time to catch a male by the throat and send him crashing down to fall beside the first.

A sharp flare of pain shot through his shoulder, a sudden pressure against his back, gone as soon as it had arrived. A glance over his shoulder found the vampire that had attacked him pinned on its back by Sam, his blood-stained maw descending for the creature’s neck. The blow was swift and clean, and the vamp’s head was barely free of his neck before Sam was leaping back into the fray to take out another.

On the other side of the room, John had already racked up an impressive kill count, tearing through the vamps with a voracity that surprised even Dean. He felt a surge of competitiveness work its way through him, the desire to be the strongest alpha around, and he picked up his own pace with a snarl.

It was almost like he fell into a rhythm; single out a vampire, remove its head. Repeat the process. Anything that happened between objectives one and two was dismissed as soon as it had happened, brain processing the wounds that the vamps managed to inflict on him even as his body dismissed the pain.

And then he heard the familiar sound of his brother, yelping in pain. 

He and his father moved at once, Dean turning so quickly that he wondered briefly if he’d somehow managed to turn within his own skin, their eyes locked on the silver knife protruding from the youngest Winchester’s side. It wasn’t a deadly blow, not if they got the knife out quickly enough, but Dean had no disillusions about the fact that his brother was officially out of the fight.

He didn’t even attempt to go for the cowardly vampire wielding the weapon, but aimed his jaws for the knife instead, tugging it free as smoothly as he could. It was longer than he’d anticipated, curved slightly inwards and if Sam had been a human he’d have been as good as dead from the moment that it had pierced his flesh.

His body jerked weakly at the sensation, a fresh pulse of blood leaking free and matting his fur. Dean resisted the urge to bend his head and lick in clean, to turn his attention from the fight and to his injured mate, but they were still outnumbered and their father couldn’t win on his own.

He settled for standing over his brother, forepaws on one side and hind on the other, and faced down every vamp that headed for them with a snarl and the blow of his teeth, unwavering in his position over his brother’s fallen form.

Underneath him, Sam panted harshly, but he refused to stay down. Just seconds after Dean had tugged the knife free, and the young werewolf was forcing his feet underneath him and unsteadily rising. Dean shifted to the right, attention momentarily diverted from his brother as he separated yet another creatures head from his body, and by the time that he had a chance to seek him out again, Sam was standing with all four paws firmly on the ground and facing down an attacker of his own.

He was slower than he would normally have been, limbs trembling slightly with the effort of holding himself up, but his movements were deliberate and sure, and Dean knew that the vampire stood no chance. 

Around them, the room was growing steadily quieter, and Dean was struck by the realization that only a handful of vampires remained. They were careless, possessed by anger and the need for vengeance, and Dean finally allowed himself to slow down and enjoy the fight a little. He darted backwards and forwards around a female vampire, sinking his teeth into her leg and then her arm, irritating her until she was so angry she couldn’t think, and then he stepped back and watched as his brother launched up on his back legs and effortlessly tore out her throat.

A heavy thud echoed across the room as John disposed of the last remaining creature, and for a moment, Dean was almost disappointed at the sudden realization that the fight was over. 

Sam limped awkwardly away from the dead vampire, head hunched low as he painfully began to change back. It took longer than it should have – long enough for Dean to gather his wits and not only start, but complete his own change – and he stayed on all fours for a long moment before rolling carefully onto his side, one arm coming up to protect his injured stomach.

Without the thick layer of fur to hide the wound, it looked even worse than Dean had expected. Still not lethal – the blade hadn’t been in for long enough to cause a serious case of silver poisoning – but an injury that would leave him in pain for weeks. If not longer.

“How was that?” Sam panted, blinking up at his brother. There was a thin sheen of sweat covering the skin of his face and his neck, trailing down beyond the cover of his t-shirt. Despite Dean’s expectations, their clothes had survived the shift fairly well – with anything too loose, their bodies refused to shift it with them, but the shirts and jeans that they’d all worn seemed to have survived with just a few tears here and there. Nothing that couldn’t be patched up. “As anticlimactic as you feared?”

Dean shrugged his shoulders, crouching down and carefully helping the younger wolf manoeuvre himself to his feet, watching the way that he swayed unsteadily for a few moments before catching himself.

“Maybe a seven out of ten,” He allowed. “Mainly because we got to tear a lot of heads off.”

Sam nodded as if that made perfect sense. “Decapitation is very therapeutic. Lots of blood. Can we just find the gun and get the hell out of here? I need a goddamn shower – we’re in a room where we just decapitated nearly thirty vamps, and all I can smell is that stupid deodorant. Next time, can we just let them smell us coming? Please?”

John snorted, shaking his head slightly.

“Sure. Why don’t you sit down?” He kicked a chair away from a small wooden table, inclining his head towards it. Sam scowled.

“Why don’t you take upstairs, and I’ll handle down here?” He offered instead, glaring slightly at the eldest Winchester. John couldn’t bite back his grin as he held his hands up in a mockery of defeat. He turned on his heels, taking the stairs two at a time, and Dean smothered his own grin into the shoulder of his shirt as he headed for the long cabinet on the other side of the room and began to search.

Sam limped a little, finally settling on a pace that didn’t irritate his wound so much as he ducked through an open doorway into a room that seemed to be functioning as some kind of office. There were papers strewn across every available surface, most of them newspaper clippings of local disappearances. It didn’t take Sam long to realize that it was some kind of record of the humans that they’d hunted – they’d even gone as far as to cut out some of the pictures from the articles, sticking them on the walls.

“Fucking vampires.” He muttered to himself, tugging open the first in a long line of drawers and quickly sorting through it before moving onto the next. He settled himself into a rhythm, moving through the room systematically, and it wasn’t until he was tugging on the handle of one of the desk drawers that he finally stumbled across a locked one.

With werewolf strength, it took only a few quick tugs to snap the small lock and send the drawer opening, and Sam grinned at the contents. Inside, there were three guns: a Beretta, a small glock, and an ornate looking Colt. He tucked the first two in the back of his jeans (because even if they didn’t like to use weapons, it didn’t mean that they had no use for them), and delicately ran the fingers of one hand over the Colt as he tugged it from the drawer. 

There were delicate carvings outlined into the silver, intricate little patterns with Celtic knot work and old Nordic runes seamlessly incorporated, and if Sam had possessed any doubt that this was the mythical gun that they’d come looking for, he would have dismissed them entirely at the sight of the small pentagram engraved at the bottom of the wooden butt. 

“Jackpot!” He called, glancing up and grinning widely as his brother stepped inside of the room. Dean’s eyes instantly fell to the handgun, and his eyes widened visibly.

“Damn. It’s real?”

Sam nodded his head. “As real as you and me.”


	6. Part Five

Honestly, none of the Winchesters had actually stopped to consider their game plan past determining whether or not the Colt was real, and finding it if it was. 

Once they had it in their possession, it was like they were suddenly at a loss for what to do. Taking other hunts seemed trivial now that they had everything lined up to take out the demon that had stolen Mary from them, but the laptop was staying silent on any signs of activity and it wasn’t as if they could just summon Azazel to their motel room and shoot him in the head.

Reluctantly, they stuck around Manning for a few days, John and Dean cleaning up the mess in the abandoned barn and Sam taking the opportunity to rest up and heal as much as possible. It was slow-going; the problem with a deep puncture to the stomach was that shifting only helped with wounds such as broken bones or dislocations – internally, they didn’t cause enough change to repair the damaged flesh. 

Whilst he would still heal from the wound a hell of a lot quicker than a human would, it was by far the longest that he’d ever considered himself out of commission. With his body focused on trying to heal the wound, he was exhausted, and every movement left him in agony. 

Predictably, it wasn’t long before his sour mood began to have an effect on the other members of their little pack. The problem with staying in one place for so long was that they were constantly in each other’s space; whilst werewolf packs were usually a lot closer than most normal families, it still wasn’t exactly smooth sailing. 

It was only three days before they found themselves snapping and snarling – John and Dean more than Sam, who was content to curl into a little ball on his bed and stay there all day – and by day four it was the self-preservation instinct that drove them from the motel room and back onto the road.

Oddly, and entirely unintentionally, John found himself leading his boys back towards the roadhouse. 

They hadn’t received the warmest of welcomes the last time that they’d been there, but worse things had happened to the Winchester three than a few hunters taking offence and holding them at gun point. He was under no illusions that they were never likely to be welcomed into the hunting community with open arms (frankly, he’d be a little disappointed if they were), but the roadhouse was a valuable resource… and not just because of Ash.

His brief understanding of the building’s purpose was that it was a refuge for hunters – not only for them to harp on about the days gone by, but to share information about hunts that needed finishing and the best way to get it done.

They were werewolves, yes, and they had a greater idea of pack than most humans understood of family, but they also weren’t stupid. If they could win so much as a few hunters over, and their lives would be infinitely easier – if only because people they ran across on their travels were less likely to try and hunt  _them_  for a change. Then again, John figured that he’d paid Davidson back nicely for trying to shoot him through the head with a silver bullet – had left him with a few new scars and a new philosophy on attacking things that knew nothing about.

They didn’t make their way directly there, zig-zagging their way across the country in between, because John wasn’t stupid enough to take an injured werewolf to a hunter bar, regardless of how confident he was in his boys’ ability to defend themselves. 

They tackled a few salt and burns, and a poltergeist that put up one hell of a remarkable right, but it was only a few weeks after their first meeting with Ellen Harvelle that they wound up right back at her door.

 

**

 

If anything, the Roadhouse was even busier than it had been the time before. The dusty lot was filled almost to the point of overflow, and the Winchester’s left their vehicles tucked neatly on the far end of the open space as they headed for the front door.

There were a few hunters lurking around on the small porch area, one leaning casually against the frame of the front door, propped open by a bar stool wedged under the handle. A couple of them ducked their head and averted their eyes as the Winchesters passed, as if worried that they might take offence to being watched, but most of them straightened their spines and outwardly glared.

John’s mood brightened a little. It was somewhat of a relief to know that, even sorely outnumbered by hunters, he and his boys were still considered a threat.

Ellen wasn’t working the bar, as far as he could tell; instead, it was a slight, blonde teenager with a pretty face that was busy bustling between customers. Her scent was familiar, and the angle of her jaw was enough to alert John to the fact that she was more than likely the infamous huntress’ daughter.

Unlike her mother, she didn’t seem to take issue with them, smiling brightly as they settled into three bar stools that were conveniently cleared as they approached. 

“What can I get you?” She offered politely. Her voice was higher than her mothers, chirpier and lighter, and the werewolf wasn’t foolish enough to believe for even one second that it had nothing to do with the way that her eyes kept flitting towards his sons. He couldn’t help but feel more than a little amused – as he always did when a stranger fell for one of them – because he’d always assumed that it was just as obvious to everyone else as it was to him that they were far too wrapped up in each other to so much as notice the attentions of another person.

He ordered three beers with a smile of his own, the young girl’s cheeks flushing scarlet as she took in the predatory edge that lurked there. It was nice to know that he hadn’t lost his game. 

“Ellen around?” He asked, when the teenager showed no intentions of moving away and giving them any privacy. Her face fell a little, but she nodded dutifully.

“She’s out back. I’ll go and get her for you.”

She forced a smile, but it was tighter than before, and John wondered absently if there was some kind of story there. Not that it was any of his business – it just paid to know where the family frictions lay, if ever he had need to expose them.

Ellen appeared from the back of the bar just a few moments later, a dry dish cloth tossed haphazardly over one shoulder and a painfully fake smile on her face.

“John,” She acknowledged. “Didn’t expect to see the three of you back so soon.”

The werewolf smiled sharply. “You really think a few people pulling guns is enough to keep us away? I’d have thought you’d have figured out enough about us by now to know that we’re not so easily scared.”

“I know enough about you to know that the other hunters don’t want you here.” The brunette shot back without pause. “Wasn’t expecting fear to keep you away so much as common sense.”

Dean growled low in his throat at the implied threat there, but Sam didn’t turn his attention from the pool game in the corner, and John was just as unflustered as always. Sometimes it paid to have experience as a pack alpha – he had a damn site more control than both of his boys put together, even if Sam did like to think that he had things all figured out, and he knew exactly when to exercise it. 

He slumped back in his chair easily, rolling his shoulders and taking a deep swallow from his beer. “Figured we’d hang around here for a few days. Maybe pick up a hunt or something whilst we wait for Azazel to make his move.”

“Azazel?” Ellen repeated, something sitting awkwardly in her tone. “That’s the demon that you’re kicking up all of this fuss about? The one that you’re hunting?”

John raised an eyebrow. “The very same. Why? The name mean something to you?”

“You could say that,” The hunter shot back, eyes suddenly dark and guarded. “He’s the son of a bitch that killed my husband three years ago.”

“Is that so? What a coincidence.”

There was something in the way that he said it that had something uneasy settling in the pit of Ellen’s stomach. “You knew?”

John shrugged his shoulders. “A little birdie might have whispered something about it to me. Which is why I thought the Roadhouse would be the best place to wait out the next couple of weeks or so… don’t you want in on a little of the action? Vengeance for your dead husband? I heard he died bloody.”

In his seat, Sam turned his head towards the conversation, grinning a little at the drawn out drawl in his father’s voice, accentuating the emotional blackmail just that little bit more.

“You’re a bastard.” Ellen accused, hands white knuckled on the bar’s counter.

John just grinned wider. “But I’m a bastard that you’re going to give a room to, aren’t I?”

For a moment, Ellen honestly thought about saying no – about watching John Winchester walk out of that door, and knew that she’d feel just as much helpless as she did victorious. Though she’d never mentioned it to Jo, nor to any other hunter that had passed through the Roadhouse in the years since Bill’s death, there was nothing more she’d like than to watch Azazel burn. 

Honestly, if it wasn’t for her daughter, she’d likely have taken off after him just as soon as she’d heard the news. She wondered if she’d have ended up like the Winchesters if she had; cold and hard and completely separated from the world around them, isolated from everyone except one another.

“I’ve only got one spare at the moment,” She reluctantly agreed after a long moment. “You alright sharing?”

John nodded even as Dean grinned, wrapping his arm around his younger brother’s waist and tugging him back until they were pressed solidly together. Ellen shifted uncomfortably.

“Lead the way.”

 

**

 

Ellen Harvelle had made plenty of mistakes in her life. It’s was only a split-second after she agreed to let the Winchester’s stay in one of her spare rooms that she recognized that she might have just made the biggest one yet.

Aside from the fact that they riled the other hunters up to no end by their mere presence, she’d also failed to factor in her mooney-eyed sixteen year old daughter. Jo was trouble enough on the best of the days, had been since she was just a little girl, and Ellen was almost scared to consider what kind of disruption the three handsome werewolves might cause if Jo was to have her way.

Then again, judging by the possessive grip that Dean had on his brother’s hip as she let herself out of the room, she didn’t think anyone was coming between those two boys. The thought made her feel more than a little uncomfortable: not only at the thought that they were brothers, but also at the somewhat heart-wrenching idea that the two boys were so wrapped up in each other that it was hard to make out where one ended and the other began.

Ellen knew loving relationships. Hell, her and Bill had been married for nearly twenty years before he’d died, and though they’d had their spats here and there, all of those years had been happy. They’d been utterly devoted to each other, but there was a difference between devotion and a dangerous level of co-dependence.

In a way, she was more scared of them than she was their father. John seemed to have some kind of sense of right and wrong, no matter how skewered it was – or at least sense enough to know better than to start a fight in a bar full of hunters. When it came to each other, Ellen was convinced – even from only the small glimpses of them that she’d seen of them – that neither of them would have that level of rationality.  
Funnily enough, it wasn’t them she was scared for. A cornered animal was a force to be reckoned with, and the Winchesters were more animal than anything with a human face had a right to be.

She swung the door shut behind her, compulsively wiping her sweaty palms on the legs of her jeans and pausing to take a deep breath before heading back into the bar. Nothing much seemed to have changed since she’d left. Jo had reappeared from the kitchen, serving drinks with the ease of a girl who’d had plenty of practice, and Ellen allowed herself a moment of pride before she grabbed a tray of her own and got to work.

For the most part, the bar’s occupants didn’t acknowledge her other than to shift aside and let her at their empty glasses, occasionally asking for a refill that she collected for them with a grin. 

She was just allowing herself to relax into the familiarity when a hand reached out and caught her wrist in a tight grip, her skin bleaching white almost immediately under the pressure. Her eyes took in the dark, somewhat angry look on Gordon’s face, and she scowled at him.

“Can I help you?” She snapped, jerking her arm back roughly. She resisted the urge to rub the sore skin and massage some feeling back into the area, reluctant to give him the satisfaction of knowing just how much it had hurt. Things had been borderline hostile between the two of them for months now, ever since Gordon had seen it appropriate to play on a fifteen-year-old’s crush and lure her out to play a potentially fatal role as bait on an incubus hunt. 

It looked like it was finally about to come to a head.

“Sure,” The hunter shot back, tone just as hostile as hers, layered with an almost laughable sense of self-righteousness. “You can start by telling me what the hell you think you’re playing at.”

Ellen squared her shoulders. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yes,” Gordon growled. “You do. Those things aren’t human – why are you treating them like they are? They don’t deserve a bed out back in one of your fancy little guest rooms… hell, all they deserve is a bullet to the head.”

“I don’t see that it’s any of your concern, Gordon.”

The hunter jerked to his feet, chair clattering noisily along the floor, effectively capturing the attention of the rest of the bar’s patrons. “Of course it’s my fucking concern! You’re going to get us all killed, you stupid cow! They’re  _dangerous_  and instead of kicking them to the curb, you’ve invited them into our safe haven and given them a front row seat to how we work. Who’s to say that they haven’t got a big pack somewhere, just waiting for their say so to come and kill the lot of us?”

Ellen’s mood soured further. “In case you’ve forgotten, this bar is  _mine_. That means that the rooms in the back are allocated at my discretion. If you have a problem with that, well, you know where the door is. Try not to let it hit you in the ass on the way out.”

Gordon jerked forwards as if he was thinking about hitting her, hand curling into a threatening fist by his side, but Ellen stood her ground, glaring him down. She saw the moment that his shoulders went down a fraction, and she was just beginning to think that she might have managed to avert a major disaster, when a new voice piped in.

“He’s right,” Walt said angrily, tossing a few bills onto his table as he rose from the chair. “Next you’ll be letting vampires and Succubi in here and offering us up on the menu. You’re just as bad as they are.”

He grabbed his jacket off the chair, shaking his head in apparent disgust as he turned and stalked towards the door. The four hunters that he’d been sat with, Roy included, followed behind him by just a few steps. Gordon wasn’t far behind.

Ellen watched them and was surprised to find that she wasn’t in the least bothered. They always had been complete and utter assholes.  
The door slammed shut behind them, and for what felt like the millionth time since the Winchesters had first forced their way into her life, the bar fell silent. All eyes were on her.

“Anyone else have a problem with the way I’m running things around here?” She demanded, perhaps somewhat unfairly. She was greeted by a few mutters that sounded suspiciously like ‘ _no, ma’am’_  and nodded firmly to herself, reaching out for her tray. “In that case, next round’s on the house.”

**

 

“Why couldn’t we have least made home base somewhere a little bit more exciting?” Sam sniped irritably, rolling his forehead against the somewhat dusty pane of glass in the window. Their room at the Roadhouse was small, two single beds crammed together with a nightstand between them and a small kitchenette with a rickety table and two chairs. The youngest Winchester felt like he was crawling out of his skin, not used to such confined quarters and hating every moment of it. “Like, somewhere with a forest or some mountains for us to run in. I’m going freaking stir crazy over here.”

John raised an eyebrow. “Believe me, we’ve noticed.”

“Besides,” Dean chimed in from his position on the bed, hiking boots kicked up on top of the sheets as he reclined against the pillow. “You’re still not fully healed yet. Not like you’d be able to keep up.”

Sam scowled darkly at the reminder of his wound, banging his forehead lightly off the window. It felt almost absurd to still be injured after a little over a week, to still feel a sharp lance of pain sear its way through his stomach every time that he moved wrong. Not that he’d admit it to anyone.

“I’m fine.”

“Sure you are,” Dean said in a somewhat placating tone, uncurling one arm from underneath his head and holding it up in offering. Sam hesitated from a long moment before uncurling from his position near his brother’s feet, propped up with his elbow on the windowsill, and allowed himself to sprawl out along the bed and tuck himself into the elder werewolf’s side. “And in a few days, you might even be fit and ready to kick some ass again. In the meantime, we’ll have to entertain ourselves by riling up our fellow hunters. They’re gonna love us by the time we shake ass outta here.”

Sam bit his shoulder lightly. 

“Or,” He muttered huskily, tucking his body in a little bit closer and slowly rolling his hips against his brother’s side. “We could think of some other ways to entertain ourselves.”

“For god’s sakes,” John groaned. “You’re even more insatiable than your mother, Sam. No sex while I’m stuck in this tiny little room with you, or else I might go nuts. It’s bad enough in motel rooms, never mind when we’re all practically on top of each other. I’m sure you can wait until after we kill this yellow-eyed son of a bitch.”

Sam pouted, pressing a lingering kiss to the side of Dean’s neck before he reluctantly untangled himself and padded across the room. John rolled his eyes as the thin frame of his son dropped onto his lap like he was still five years old, knees curling up against his chest as he relaxed into his father’s chest. John’s arm came up instinctively, ensuring that the omega didn’t fall off, but it was a waste of effort.  
Werewolves had a fantastic sense of balance. Sam especially.

“Doesn’t matter how much you try to sweeten me up,” He grinned mockingly at his youngest son. “The no sex rule stays. I promise I’ll get you your own motel room when all of this blows over, okay?”

Sam sighed, tucking his head under his father’s.

“It had better blow over quick.”


	7. Part Six

By the time that their third week in the Roadhouse rolled around, Sam – now fully healed – wasn’t the only Winchester that was getting restless. 

John remembered, faintly, what it had been like to have a permanent little house of his own. A little den of safety that he went back to every day, where he knew that his beta and their children could curl up safely and without any need for protection, but the memory seemed distant. Ever since Azazel had first happened into their lives, John had found safety in the idea of constant movement, never sticking in one place for more than a few months.

It had kept them off the radar, completely and utterly untraceable, but it seemed that the need to move was now so firmly ingrained into him that he’d never be able to settle again. He remembered promising himself, back in the first few weeks after the fire, that he’d find a new pack and settle down as his sons got a little older.

He’d never intended to take a new mate – wolves mated for life, and that was a sacred bond that no human could ever understand – but he had intended to give his boy’s the opportunity to live with others of their kind. Somehow, that plan had gotten more and more pushed to one side as his knowledge of hunting had grown, and by the time that he’d realized that his kids were old enough to seek out a mate, they’d already found each other.

There was a word for wolves like them, packless save for each other and without any sense of stability, and John had never felt more like a rogue wolf than he had in the moment that he realized that he’d couldn’t sit still for a moment longer without tearing something’s throat out.   
He felt trapped, caged like some kind of zoo exhibit or circus creature, and it left him feeling uneasy and sickly. His boys paced constantly, and he knew that he’d taken their one means of working out their frustrations from them when he’d introduced the 'no fucking' rule.

Instead, they turned to fighting. It had just been a few play scraps in the dusty yard out back at first, each of them gradually turning more and more violent.

Now, it was hard to tell if they’d even think to stop before they seriously injured one another, but as much as he needed them healthy for the final fight, John was loathe to interfere. They were snapping and snarling at each other, baring still-human teeth as feral noises tore free from their throats, punching and kicking and using every dirty trick in the book.

They were pretty evenly-matched, all things considered. Dean had the weight advantage, but Sam was unnaturally quick, and his smaller frame allowed him to wriggle out of most situations. John watched in silence, analyzing their technique in lieu of anything else to do, eyes doing their best to take in even the most subtle of movements.

By the time that Ash appeared from inside the bar, laptop in hand, Sam was bleeding from a deep graze along the edge of one hipbone, and Dean had a bruise darkening along one cheek. They were both grinning, occasionally laughing when they one-upped the other. 

The MIT drop-out shifted uncomfortably in response to John’s eyebrow, raising the laptop a little, as if it was some kind of signal that the werewolf should understand.

“I think I’ve got a hit on the demon,” he announced awkwardly after a few seconds. “Crop failures, livestock mutilations, electrical failures… the whole shebang.”

John’s spine straightened, and behind him Sam flipped Dean expertly onto his back; the older Winchester propped himself up on his elbows, one hand absently sliding around to grip his brother’s thigh as the two of them stared at Ash with interest. “You have? Where?”

Ash shifted his weight on his feet again. “Uh, here. Actually. Or on its way here, from what I can tell… pretty sure that this demon is comin’ straight for you. And, by proxy, the rest of us. And it’s headed this way  _fast_.”

“The demon’s coming to a hunter bar?” Dean frowned, hand sliding up to his brother’s waist as he easily shifted the younger man with him, pulling the two of them to their feet. Sam dusted off his jeans absently. “That makes no sense.”

John raised an eyebrow with a small grin. “Why not? We did it. Besides, this thing’s always acted like a bullheaded sonofabitch, thinking he’s all-powerful or something. Just because he’s old enough to have his name in the Bible doesn’t mean he can’t be killed.”

“Assuming the Colt works,” Sam pointed out idly, cocking his head a little as he made his way closer to them. “Which we don’t know for sure that it will. It could just be a real pretty gun, for all we know.”

John waved him off. “Elkins knew what he was talking about. The Colt will work. My main concern, however, is that this thing’s headed straight for us, and I’m not exactly itching to have a bar full of hunters hanging around and cramping our style.”

“So what?” Dean asked, slinging a casual around his brother’s waist, fingers idly playing along the edge of broken skin there. “We tell Ellen to send them all packing? I can’t see her agreeing to that in too much of a hurry. Not like she trusts us.”

“Damn straight I don’t,” The brunette in question intoned, stepping out of the open doorway, arms crossed over her chest. “Without everyone else here, there ain’t anything stopping you from turning on me and Jo and Ash, and I sure as  _hell_  aren’t leaving you alone in my bar.”

John scowled. “So what do you propose we do?”

“Widen the playing field,” Ellen announced. “Azazel’s not going to be coming by himself. Chances are that he’ll have himself a little entourage. So we stake people out – the roof’s flat enough for some snipers, and salt rounds soaked in holy water will be enough to slow a few of them down, if nothing else.”

“And then what? Mass exorcism?” Dean mocked. “They’re not just gonna stand still. As soon as they realize that they’re under fire, their first objective will be to take out the snipers.”

Ellen scowled back at him, hands on her hips. “I’ve got an old speakerphone system that we can hook up – if we pre-record an exorcism, it might be enough to get rid of a few lower level demons. As for the snipers, I wasn’t going to suggest they be our only line of defence. I know a few good hunters who owe me some favours, and as much as I hate to call them in on your behalf, I want this thing dead just as much as you do. They’ll come, if I ask them to, and it should mean that you’ll have the opportunity to go straight for the big guy himself without worrying about the rest of us ‘cramping your style.’”

For a moment, John looked like he was going to shoot her plan down, and then he caught Sam’s half-nod out of the corner of his eye. He turned to look at his youngest son, could almost see the pup’s brain going through the process of working out the minute details, and his nod became firmer and more sure. 

Hell, if Sam was onboard, then it was good enough for him.

“Fine,” He conceded. “You’d best start calling in those favours.”

 

**

 

“Henry, I can understand your reluctance, I really can, but-“

The hard voice cut Ellen off, tone unwavering even over the slightly crackling line. “No. You know I’d do anything for you, Ellen, but I’m not coming this time. Those Winchesters are dangerous – should have been put down like mangy dogs as soon as they dared to call themselves hunters – and I’m not putting my neck on the line like this. I’ve got Mandy to think about.”

Ellen sighed, running her hand through her long hair. In the hours since she’d first come up with her somewhat impromptu plan, she’d cleared the bar of any hunters that she’d hadn’t known well enough to enlist, and had phoned nine more. They’d all agreed, though they’d done so with varying levels of enthusiasm, and she’d found herself putting Henry off longer and longer, until he was the last one left to call.

Mainly because she hadn’t been sure that he’d say yes. Of all of the hunters on her list, Charlie included, he was the one that she trusted the most. He was also the one with the most to lose – a beautiful thirteen year old daughter who hung on his every word. She could understand his reasoning in turning her down, but she couldn’t help the way that her heart sunk a little.

“I know that,” She conceded. “But this demon’s coming here whether we like it or not, and there’s no way to stop it other than to finally kill the thing. This is the thing that killed Bill. I… I need you on this one. You’re my big brother.”

Henry sighed, and she could practically see his hand running through his dark hair, face set into a frown. 

“Yeah,” He agreed after a long moment. “Okay. Just this once, though, and only because it’s the thing that got Bill. I’ll drop Mandy at her sitter’s house and hopefully I should be able to get there for this evening. That okay?”

Ellen nodded to herself. “It’s perfect. Thank you, Henry. I owe you for this one.”

“If we both walk away from this unharmed, then I’ll be willing to call it even.” He snorted. “I sure as hell hope you know what you’re doing, El.”  
The huntresses eyes flickered across the bar, to where the Winchester’s were sat in a booth, apparently entirely unfazed by the things that were going down around them. Sam and Dean were sitting close, heads bent as they muttered to each other, and John was scribbling in the leather-bound journal that she’d noticed him carting around.

She sighed despite herself. 

“Yeah,” She agreed softly. “Me, too.”

 

**

 

“Huh,” Dean pondered loudly, leaning against the bar as he studied the room around them. “I guess Ellen really did have a few favors to call in.”

A quick headcount revealed thirteen hunters dotted around the bar, most of them in various stages of preparing their weapons of choice, a few of them loudly debating which exorcism stood the greatest chance of working. Ellen had said that there was another one due to arrive later that evening, though it had taken a little bit of wheedling before she’d admitted that it was her brother.

She’d made Ash and Jo reluctantly promise to get out of dodge, packing them into her truck with a promise not to come back until she phoned to say that they had the all clear. Dean had honestly expected the two of them to put up more of a fight about staying then they had, and it wasn’t until they were tucked away inside the car and headed for the sunset that he wondered if the humans were scared. 

“I still think they’re just gonna get in our way,” Sam shot back, raising an eyebrow when one of the men pulled a bar stool across the room and stood on it precariously, a friend of his passing him some spray paint so that they could begin to detail a devil’s trap above the doorway. 

John shrugged his shoulders slightly, glancing up from where he was running a cloth of the shining metal of the Colt. “If nothing else, they might distract Azazel’s entourage long enough for us to get close enough to kill him. Cannon fodder.”

Ellen glared darkly at them from her position further along the bar, where her and Charlie were working their way through an impressive amount of guns with a rag and some gun oil. 

“Are you  _trying_  to get everyone to leave?” She hissed, apparently having overheard their conversation. It wasn’t surprising, given that none of them had spared so much as a thought to lowering their voices. “Jesus. We can take care of ourselves, alright?”

John just grinned lightly, offering her a wink. “Well, this is the perfect opportunity to prove it.”

Charlie made a somewhat outraged noise, rising slightly from his seat, interrupted by the sound of the door opening. The guy on the stool wobbled precariously for a moment, and Dean leant slightly to the side in order to see what exactly Ellen’s brother looked like; for a moment, all he could see was the empty parking lot, and then the guy on the stool went flying into the room, red paint splattering across the floor in an arc.

He was launched almost halfway across the width of the room before he came clattering down, breaking a table in half with the force of the impact. It was then, and only then, that the first of the demons pushed their way inside. 

There was more than they’d been banking on, close to thirty of them, and from his place on the other end of the room, it was impossible for Dean to tell if any of them had yellow eyes.

The room descended into chaos. The demons had caught most of the hunters completely off-guard (and why the hell had Ellen sent Ash away, even knowing that he was the only person that might have been able to give them a little bit of advanced notice?), and there was a scramble for weapons. Dean took a chance to appreciate his own claws and teeth, and then he was darting forwards to join the fray. 

A quick glance up told him that the devil’s trap on the doorway, wide enough to hold at least five demons inside, had been completed before its artist had been tossed aside. It wouldn’t be enough to hold most of the higher-level demons, but already two hunters had teamed up to bully one inside. 

A bullet shot past his ear with a faint whistle, and Dean grinned as he swung his hand around, claws extended and aiming straight for the throat of the demon in front of him. The man growled low in his throat, blocking the blow and pushing his hand forwards as if expecting something to happen; Dean grinned widely, grabbing the limb and pressing it backwards without a second’s hesitation, hearing the bones snap as he did so.

“Werewolf,” He grinned. “Your psychic shit doesn’t work on us.”

Seconds later and the demon’s throat was torn out. He used the distraction for what it was, crouching down and swinging around behind it to slice through the back of its legs – injury to its meatsuit might not kill it, but Dean could disable it and toss it aside for one of the other hunters to exorcise. 

Sam brushed past him, all-but playing with a demon in the meatsuit of a guy that looked suspiciously like a football player; wide set body, with heavy muscles and a thick neck. His eyes were narrowed in concentration, limbs sweeping and flailing clumsily as he attempted to land a blow on Sam’s fast-moving figure.

Dean grinned to himself, turning towards the demon that had been trying to sneak up on him from the side and grinning wickedly as his nails tore into the flesh of her wrist as he grabbed her and tugged her towards him. 

There was a loud crackling noise that Dean recognized instantly as the sound of a loudspeaker, and he grinned as he heard the first lines of the exorcism, somewhat distorted by the age of the speakers. They hadn’t gotten around to pre-recording it, but it seemed that Ellen had come up with a solution – she had a small book clutched in one hand, and the microphone in the other, reading as loudly and as clearly as she could whilst Charlie and another hunter covered her.

A few of the lower level demons surged towards the doors, as if trying to escape, but the entrances were blocked and Dean grinned as he distractedly tore out the throat of the demon he’d be wresting and tossed her aside, absently noting the way that her hands came up to clutch at her ears. Demons were hitting the deck left and right, and the first plumes of smoke began to curl and twist in the air as Ellen continued, voice getting stronger.

A loud crash sounded from the other side of the room, where Sam and a demon had disappeared through the now-empty doorway, taking the door with them in two halves. Dean wasn’t worried – seconds later there was a loud, pain-filled yell, and Sam reappeared with a grin on his face and blood smeared across his hands.

He caught his brother’s eyes for a few seconds, both of them grinning and thrumming with adrenaline, and then another demon headed for Dean and his brother melted seamlessly back into the fight. 

There were only a few demons left standing by the time that Ellen’s exorcism ended, perhaps five or six, and the fight seemed to slow to a halt as hey glanced between one another and the hunters took the opportunity to regroup. Dean was vaguely impressed to find most of them still standing, a few of them looking battered but only three or so of them lost from the fight completely.

“Impressive,” A voice intoned, low and distinctly amused sounding. “I didn’t think you hunters would have the brains to go for a mass exorcism.”

Dean’s eyes located the man as soon as he spoke. He was tall and well-dressed, brunette hair and a cocky grin. His most distinctive feature, however, was by far the wide-set yellow eyes that seemed to reflect back the dim light in the small bar. Dean felt the edges of his lips curl into a snarl, and a few feet to his left, John dropped a hand to the waistband of his jeans – fingers curling around the butt of the gun resting there.

“Underestimating people seems to be a common trait in demons,” He remarked lightly, tugging the weapon free but keeping it out of sight, tucked behind his back. “You might want to look into that, for future reference.”

Azazel raised an eyebrow, a small smile spreading across his face. “A werewolf with a sense of humor? I have to admit that I admire you a little, John Winchester. You and those boys of yours. Your dedication to tracking me down over the years has been more than a little flattering, and you’re the first ones to so much as consider the idea of tracking down the Colt. Very intelligent.”

Dean scowled. “We didn’t ask for a peer review on hunting technique.”

“Just thought I’d share my thoughts on the matter,” Azazel sighed, rolling his eyes in apparent exasperation. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but werewolves aren’t my usual fair. I tend to stick to humans, but your Mary… well, she was a spectacular little specimen.”

The dark growl that tumbled free of John’s chest was more wolf than human, a noise so deep and animalistic that it seemed to echo through the room. Charlie, the only hunter with the balls enough to stand within five feet of any of the Winchesters, winced a little and shuffled half-a step backwards. 

The demon’s grin widened. “Now, now. We’re not still angry, are we? It’s been years, now, John. I half thought that you’d have found yourself a nice young bitch to start a new pack with – hell, it’s clear that your boys are too fucked in the head to carry on the family name. Might as well throw out a few more pups before someone finally manages to shoot you full enough of silver that it sticks. Revenge is for the weak.”

Dean bit down on a growl of his own at the slight dig, refusing to take the bait that the demon had lain out for them. As if it was the first time that he and Sam had been forced to endure their relationship being tossed in their faces. It was always slightly entertaining when people fell under the impression that shit like that might actually work, and he had to admit that he’d expected more from the demon that been hunting for so long.

“This works better for my own plans, of course,” Azazel continued, unhurried. “I was a little worried about adding dear little Sammy to my team one day. Wolves don’t always play nice with other people, you understand, and I couldn’t afford for him to decide to turn on us… and then you go and install a neat little sense of pack loyalty into him. I honestly couldn’t have done it better myself.”

Confusion hit thick and fast, and Dean glanced at his father out of the corner of his eye, wondering what the hell the demon was talking about. Why the hell did he seem to think that Sam might actually want anything to do with him? He’d killed their mother. John didn’t seem surprised, and the young werewolf felt the first faint stirrings of anger in the pit of his stomach.

“That’s where you’re wrong,” John snarled, a familiar feral grin making its way across his face. “Because that loyalty is exactly the thing that means that – even if you  _were_  to walk out of this alive, which you won’t – Sam would never roll over for you. Because there’s no place in your army for Dean, and there’s no Sam without Dean.”

Azazel’s easy grin faltered for the first time, and his eyes glowed almost gold with anger, an ugly scowl forming on his face. “Well, then. If he’s really as useless as you think he is, I’ll just have to kill him off with the rest of you. Funny how you seem so sure you’ll be walking out of this the victor – how do you ever plan to surprise me now? I’ve already ruined your best laid plans.”

“That’s the best part,” John grinned, letting his hand slip out from behind his back for the first time. “We already have.”

The gun in his hands was a Colt, alright; the ancient revolver that had once belonged to the parents of one Mary Winchester, the metal faded and scratched and the chamber long beyond the point of being usable. 

Azazel’s eyes widened in surprise, and Dean saw the moment that he realized he’d been played. He turned slowly, and the werewolf felt his grin widen as his position gave him the perfect view of the demon’s face when his eyes fell on Sam Winchester. The young man was grinning faintly, the Colt trained deliberately on the demon’s forehead, the barrel so close that it was almost touching the vulnerable skin there.

“And back to the desert you go...” The teenager sing-songed, hazel eyes glinting wickedly as his finger tightened on the trigger.

The sound of the shot echoed through the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The line 'and back to the desert you go' was based off the following bible quote: And Aaron shall place lots upon the two he goats: one lot "For the Lord," and the other lot, "For Azazel." And Aaron shall bring the he goat upon which the lot, "For the Lord," came up, and designate it as a sin offering. And the he goat upon which the lot "For Azazel" came up, shall be placed while still alive, before the Lord, to [initiate] atonement upon it, and to send it away to Azazel, into the desert.'


	8. Epilogue

The moon was high in the sky, casting a silver glow across the earth below. 

The underbrush was alive with the sounds of night; crickets and grasshoppers chirping somewhere out of sight, the faint rustle as rabbits and mice shot through the dense coverage of the plant life. Owls hooted in the trees, and there was a distant yelp of a fox chasing its littermates through the densely packed trees.

Dean Winchester crouched beneath the cover of a low-hanging tree, green eyes glowing faintly with the reflection of the moon’s rays. His tawny fur glistened with the heady dew that promised morning would be coming soon, and his muscles were tense, every part of him prepared for whatever action was needed.

He waited patiently, green eyes locked on the small opening on the other side of the clearing, eager for the first hints of movement.

Next to him, his father shifted his weight slightly, one still-human hand tangled into the fur on the back of his oldest son’s neck, thick-soled biker boots leaving dark imprints in the earth. Dean instinctively shifted his own weight in response, settling into a more comfortable position and pressing his claws into the earth, feeling the pleasant stretch in the muscles of his forelegs as he did so.

For a moment, the world seemed still and silent, and then an Owl screeched viciously and the small clearing descended into chaos.  
A small family of rabbits shot into the open, eyes wide and terrified; birds took to the air, startled from their resting places, and down below, a large canine shape shot forwards, a slightly smaller one on its tail.

The black dog was twice the size of any werewolf; black fur and amber eyes, it stunk of blood and death and decay. Sam couldn’t have been more of a contrast if he’d tried – he emerged just a split-second after the best, eyes locked on the vulnerable skin of it’s ankles as he pushed it forwards, urged it into fleeing for its life.

His coat was golden and soft-looking, eyes bright with intelligence and amusement, and Dean itched with the urge to follow him. John’s fingers tightened in his fur for a long moment, and then relaxed.

“Come on, son,” he grinned, eyes locked on the trampled foliage marking his youngest son’s trail. “We’ve got work to do."

 

  
 

[Art Masterpost](http://sammycolt24.livejournal.com/6226.html)


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